Solidarity leader Lech Walesa said Thursday he will be able to work with newly appointed Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Rakowski despite past differences. ``I know his arguments and his way of thinking,'' the leader of the banned trade union movement said, speaking at a news conference on his 45th birthday. Walesa referred to the legal period of Solidarity in 1981, when Rakowski was deputy prime minister in charge of dealing with trade unions. Solidarity was banned in early 1982. ``I always came to Mr. Rakowski in those times with various problems and I always looked afterward at what I got, and not at Mr. Rakowski. I have to admit I had no complaints about the work,'' he said. ``Similarly now I am ready to solve all the problems that I am going to raise. I have enough arguments, all of Europe and the world know them,'' said Walesa, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize. Parliament on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved Rakowski as the country's ninth prime minister since World War II. The government led by Zbigniew Messner resigned Sept. 19 following strong criticism of its failure to achieve reform. In his speech to Parliament, Rakowski asked for two weeks to form a government of people with ``reformatory attitudes'' and said he hoped to broaden the Communist-dominated government. Walesa said he could shed no light on exactly when planned round-table talks with authorities slated for mid-October will begin. Authorities agreed to the talks on Solidarity after a wave of strikes in August. ``Society is waiting for the round-table talks, that is evident,'' Walesa said. He said Solidarity would object if the talks were stretched out for too long. ``We are not marathon runners,'' he said. In a statement issued Thursday, the Warsaw branch of the Club of Catholic Intelligentsia urged the round-table to take decisions to change the form of public life in Poland and called for legalization of Solidarity. ``The fulfillment of this postulate (legalization of Solidarity) is the essential condition of actual reform of political and economic life,'' the statement said. Club President Andrzej Stelmachowski has played a key role as an intermediary between the authorities and Solidarity recently. In London, the opposition Labor Party on Thursday accused British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of ``supreme hypocrisy'' in arranging to meet Walesa Oct. 18 in Gdansk at the end of a three-day official visit. ``She is undermining the position of trades unions at home while appearing to encourage trades unionists in another country,'' said George Foulkes, Labor Party foreign affairs spokesman. Mrs. Thatcher's Conservative government has drastically reduced British labor union powers.
