Walesa informed for communist secret police, claims new book

The allegations in a new book revive claims which have been repeatedly denied by the Nobel Peace Laureate, whose Solidarity movement toppled Polish communism in 1989.

Authors Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk - historians at the Institute of National Remembrance which oversees communist-era files - say previously unknown documents link Mr Walesa to the secret police in the early 1970s.

Denial: Poland's former President Lech Walesa, pictured last year, has refuted the claims of collaboration

His office declined to comment on the excerpts in today's Rzeczpospolita newspaper.

But according to reports elsewhere Mr Walesa is planning to sue the authors when the book - Walesa And The Security Service - goes on sale next Monday.

The two also claim that, while serving as Poland's first post-communist president from 1990 to 1995, Mr Walesa removed from the state archive documents they say proved his communist-era collaboration.

The allegations about Walesa's past first surfaced in 1992. A vetting court ruled in 2000 that he had never been an agent for the secret police and Walesa, now 64, has won several court cases on the issue.

President Lech Kaczynski revived the allegations in a television programme and last week, Mr Walesa responded angrily by demanding that Kaczynski be removed from office.

The animosity between the two men dates back to the 1990s when Mr Kaczynski started questioning Mr Walesa's leading role in Solidarity.

But not everyone at the Institute of National Remembrance agrees with the new book's findings.

Deputy director Maria Dmochowska has distanced herself from the book in a letter to Mr Walesa published by Polish newspapers today.

She said it would take a secret police mentality to be so suspicious of the former leader.

'Only if you see the world around you from the perspective of the secret police can you view (the Walesa story) in this way,' she wrote.