Word: interior
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Although Mazowiecki's appointment opened a new chapter in Polish history, the Communists still retained formidable power. Even before Mazowiecki was tapped by the President, Solidarity told the Communists they would continue to hold the key Defense and Interior Ministry -- and perhaps the Foreign Ministry -- portfolios in any new government, and Walesa assured Moscow that Poland would remain a member of the Warsaw Pact. The Communists also retained their monopoly on positions within the bloated bureaucracy...
...proposed that Solidarity form a government. The new President said no. Instead he invited Solidarity to join a grand coalition government headed by the Communists. Walesa refused. Soon thereafter Jaruzelski stepped down as Communist Party leader in favor of Mieczyslaw Rakowski. The President asked Czeslaw Kiszczak, who has been Interior Minister since 1981, to form a new government. By Aug. 7, Kiszczak had still been unable to do so, and Walesa once again called for a Solidarity- led government. This time he pitched his appeal directly to the United Peasants and the Democrats...
...Baltic states also demand more say in military affairs. The Estonian government has petitioned Moscow to put more Estonians in the republic's interior-ministry forces and border guards. There have been calls to restore the tradition of local military units like the Sixteenth Lithuanian Rifle Division, and more radical proposals to create a zone of peace in the Baltics. Says Latvian Popular Front leader Dainis Ivans: "We should decide ourselves how many military bases we need on our territory and move step by step toward making Latvia a military-free zone...
...hostages are also pawns in the games played by powerful Middle East states. In Iran, they are part of a domestic power struggle between Rafsanjani and his hard-line Interior Minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashami, who served as paymaster to Hizballah in the early 1980s. Experts feel that Mohtashami's - ability to sustain the hostage holding will be a litmus test of his power under the newly elected President. Syria, which maintains about 25,000 troops in Lebanon, could improve its relations with the West by rescuing the hostages, but it wields little influence over the Shi'ites who hold them...
Given the inherent frictions between the Communists and the opposition, it is questionable whether any Communist candidate for Prime Minister would have coasted to victory. Even so, some Solidarity legislators found Kiszczak, 63, particularly tough to take. During his eight-year tenure as Interior Minister, Kiszczak controlled the police and paramilitary forces and was responsible for hunting down and jailing Solidarity activists during the martial-law crackdown that began in 1981. Many of those activists are now seated in the Sejm...