Solidarity was a national freedom movement under Walesa’s leadership in the 1980s that helped bring down communism. It is now a major trade union.
Walesa said in televised remarks that President Bronislaw Komorowski and the U.S. ambassador had called him hoping to persuade him to meet Obama. Walesa insisted that he preferred to travel to Italy for a biblical festival, and that he had no interest in a meeting that would amount to little more than a photo-op.
“It does not suit me,” the 67-year-old former president said in comments on news station TVN24.
He did not divulge more but it seemed likely that Walesa was offended at not being offered a one-on-one meeting with Obama from the start. Initially, there was talk of Walesa meeting with Obama along with other Polish politicians. In past visits to Poland, U.S. presidents often scheduled private meetings with him, even flying from Warsaw to his home in the northern port city of Gdansk to see him.
Though Walesa’s snub was unusual, he is known in Poland for public complaining if he has not been given sufficient respect.
Obama will hold two days of political meetings focusing on security, energy and joint U.S.-Polish efforts to promote democracy in North Africa, Belarus and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
But unlike past U.S. presidents who visited this nation of 38 million, Obama will not meet or address the Polish public directly. That deprives him of the chance to connect directly — and emotionally — with Poles in the way former presidents such as George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton did on visits to the country.
It will also make it harder for him to win over a nation that has never warmed to him the way many have in more liberal Western Europe, according to Marcin Zaborowski, a political analyst and director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs.
Obama will attend a dinner Friday night with about 20 central and eastern European leaders holding a yearly summit. However, the inclusion of Kosovo’s president has caused a diplomatic wrinkle, prompting Serbia and Romania to boycott the event in protest. Neither one recognizes the independence of the former Serbian province.
Obama’s trip will also feature bilateral talks that U.S. and Polish officials say will focus on security issues. Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said the two countries would discuss a plan for Washington to station F-16 fighter jets and Hercules planes in Poland on a rotational basis starting in 2013.
Another key topic will be deepening cooperation in the area of shale gas exploration and nuclear energy.
Several U.S. companies are searching for shale gas in Poland, which is believed to hold vast quantities of the energy source underground. American companies also hope to have a role in a Polish project to build the country’s first-ever nuclear power plants in the coming years.
But perhaps most importantly, the trip offers a chance for Washington to stress to Poles that it considers the relationship important — a message U.S. officials have made an effort to stress.
“It’s significant that the president is coming here not as part of a Central or Eastern European swing,” a senior official in the Obama administration told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
“He’s coming here after visiting major European capitals and taking part in a major G-8 meeting, and he very much sees our relationship with Poland in that context — as one of the most influential members of the EU and most active members of NATO.”
Poles have felt in past years that both the administrations of George W. Bush and that of Obama have neglected their concerns, and traditionally strong pro-American sentiments are in decline compared with the early years after the fall of communism. At that time, Washington was seen as both a model of democracy that helped end the Cold War and as Poland’s main guarantor of security in a region where Russia still throws its weight around.
Polish complaints have centered on a feeling that Poland’s military contribution in Iraq — and the loss of lives there — left the country with few benefits, economic or otherwise, and there is deep popular resentment that Poles still don’t enjoy visa-free travel to the U.S.
There has also been concern that the U.S. interest in “resetting” ties with Moscow could come at the cost of Poland and its neighbors, once under its influence. Anxieties were high when Obama scrapped a Bush-era plan to put a major missile defense base in Poland, with many Poles believing the step was made to appease Moscow.
The relationship is marked by a rise in Polish self-confidence after years of membership in NATO and the European Union, an enhanced status underlined by Warsaw preparing to take over the rotating presidency of the EU in July.
Monika Scislowska contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.newsvine.com