Friday, January 06, 2006

Ten more ambassadors fall after Szlajfer

Just months after Poland's ambassador-designate to Washington resigned in disgrace after being exposed as a Soviet-era secret police collaborator, the new conservative government in Warsaw has launched a systematic purge of the diplomatic service.

The outgoing former communists had named Henryk Szlajfer, an ex-Trotskyist and secret police stukatch, as Poland's ambassador to the United States last spring when FourthWorldWar.com reported on the surviving index of Szlajfer's secret police file.

After protesting his innocence, Szlajfer finally confronted the facts and quit. The controversy ripped the lid off Poland's dirtiest secret: the protection and promotion of thousands of KGB-era collaborators at all levels of government.

President Lech Kasczynsk and Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, elected in September, haven't wasted any time in implementing a bold plan to rid their country, finally, of the individuals who served the Soviet collaborationist regimes.

The Foreign Ministry announced January 4 that it was sacking 10 ambassadors for being "linked to communist-era special services or to the communist party" of the old regime.

The Polish press reports that the ambassadors to be cashiered are posted in Algeria, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Israel, Lithuania, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom.