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2 The Krakow Post R E G I O N A L N E W S Ex-Soviet states seek energy ties with Japan: official The GUAM regional bloc of four former Soviet states late last week called for closer ties with Japan over both energy-saving technology and pipeline construction in the Caspian Sea. Representatives of the group – Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – visited Japan, a major energy importer, for talks with Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura. “Japan is the world leader in energy-saving technologies,” Andriy Veselovskyi, deputy foreign minister of Ukraine, told a news conference with other GUAM delegate members. “We are interested to have this technology. This is beneficial both for us and for you because Japan expands their technologies to other countries,” he said. The group at the same time called on Tokyo to take part in construction of additional pipelines in the energy-rich region in an effort to diversify energy supplies. “Diversifying routes of energy would be beneficial for the region and for the world market,” Veselovskyi said. Japan, the world’s second largest economy, has virtually no natural energy resources of its own. The European-oriented GUAM was formed in 1997 as an alternative to the Commonwealth of Independent States, a Kremlin-dominated grouping of ex-Soviet countries. (AFP) U.S. broadcaster denounces jailing of Azeri correspondent A U.S.-funded broadcaster denounced the jailing of its Azeri correspondent late last week for slander by the same local court that had cleared him of the charge two days earlier. Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty called in a statement for the immediate release of 42-year-old correspondent Ilgar Nasibov. Nasibov turned up at the court in the western city of Nakhchivan expecting to be given his dismissal charges after being cleared of the slander charges brought by local police two days earlier. “Instead, without the presence of legal counsel, the judge reinstated the charges and sentenced Nasibov to 90 days in prison,” the broadcaster, funded by the U.S. Congress, said. RFE/RL president, Jeff Gedmin, said the court’s action was “a complete mockery of due process which violates Azerbaijan’s own lawful, judicial procedure.” Nakhchivan police had subjected Nasibov and his wife, who also works for the broadcaster, to harassment by bringing spurious charges against them for more than a year, he said. Both journalists had highlighted human rights abuses and abuses of power in the former Soviet Republic in the South Caucasus. RFE/RL broadcasts 10 hours daily to Azerbaijan, producing most programming in its bureau in the capital Baku. (AFP) Czech lawmakers approve foreign military missions Czech lower house lawmakers late last week approved government plans for foreign military missions next year, which include a boosted presence in Afghanistan but a reduced one in Iraq. In Iraq, Czech Defense Minister Vlasta Parkanova announced plans in October to cut the force from 100 to 20 next year with effect from July 2008. Most of the current Czech contingent is deployed around Basra in southern Iraq, where one of its main tasks is to guard the international base not far from the city. As part of a wider reshuffle, the government also proposed boosting its forces serving in Afghanistan from 224 to 415. The Czech’s largest current foreign contingent, the around 550-strong peace force in Kosovo, should remain at existing levels next year. The government proposal has still to be cleared by the Czech upper house, the Senate. (AFP) Czech gov’t unchanged on missile shield after report The Czech government vowed late last week to press ahead with negotiations with Washington about hosting part of an anti-missile shield despite a U.S. intelligence report downgrading the threat posed by Iran. “The U.S. intelligence report will not influence the attitude of the Czech government in the face of further negotiations with the U.S. over the possible installation of a radar station on Czech soil,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The threat of a missile attack from “rogue states” such as Iran is frequently cited by Washington as the main reason for its missile defense shield project. The Czech Foreign Ministry stressed that the U.S. report, released Monday, concerned Iran’s nuclear program and not the development of missile delivery systems, which it said was ongoing. “According to the report, Iran will probably be capable of producing a sufficient quantity of nuclear material for the production of a nuclear bomb between 2010 and 2015. “This corresponds with the previous estimates. By this date the European pillar of anti-missile defense should be in place,” the statement said. The U.S. plan calls for the installation of a powerful targeting radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland by 2012. (AFP) P O L A N D “New Jews” kindle revival in lost heartland Polish Jews celebrating Hanukkah. agence france-presse the krakow post The Ministry of Education has done an aboutface and begun considering whether to add a section on religion to the comprehensive examination that high school seniors must pass before they can graduate. Students would not have to pass the religion component to obtain a diploma. They would simply have the choice of taking it if they wanted to. The ministry’s decision reverses the Prime Minister Donald Tusk administration’s stance on the religious-component issue in its earliest days in office. News of the government’s about-face has touched off an angry debate on the subject. On one side are Catholic Church officials and politicians who support religious values. On the other side are those who want to keep religion out of schools. Prime Minister Tusk said that although his administration is discussing the idea that the previously ruling right-wing party Law and Justice originally proposed, the government is far from making a decision on it. Church officials began pushing for a religion component in the comprehensive exam in 1999, according to Father Piotr Tomasik, who works on education issues for the Conference of Polish Bishops. The ultra-conservative, pro-Catholic Law and Justice party began working on adding religion to the exam after it won the most seats in the lower house elections of 2005. The education minister at the time, Roman Giertych, put together a plan for the religion component in 2006. Representatives of the Catholic Church, 12 other religions and religious associations worked with him on the plan. With the help of this religious advisory group, Giertych produced a sample religion component for the exam. In Europe’s former Jewish heartland, flickering Hanukkah candles are a symbol of both the annual religious festival and the inner light guiding dozens of Poles to their roots and the culture of their forebears. The revival of Judaism in Poland is being kindled by “new Jews”: Poles raised in the shadow of the Nazi Holocaust and Communist-era anti-Semitism, who have chosen to leave the mainstream in a country that is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. After ceremonies marking Hanukkah in Warsaw’s Jewish cultural center, recent convert Agnieszka Kwasniewska, 37, recalled her awakening. “When I came to the synagogue, it was like I had always belonged,” she told AFP. “It was like coming home.” Like many of her counterparts, Kwasniewska’s conversion began as a quest to understand the things left unsaid by her family. “We never talked about my ancestors. It was like something had been broken,” she said. As a 12-year-old, her paternal grandmother had told her she had been forced to hide during World War II because she “looked like a Jew.” “I knew there was something not quite right in this story. She cried a lot. We never talked about it again.” “Later I asked my father and he said, ‘That’s past history, and there’s no going back. We’re Catholics’,” said Kwasniewska, whose conversion to Judaism has caused tension with her family. According to various estimates, Poland counts just 3,500 to 15,000 Jews out of a total population of 38 mln people, more than 90 percent of whom are Catholic. But it is near impossible to say how many Poles have some Jewish ancestry. Jews first emigrated to Poland from western Europe to escape 11th century pogroms, and on the eve of World War II, there were around 3.5 mln there. The capital Warsaw alone had a Jewish community of 400,000, ranging from the entirely non-religious to traditionally-dressed Orthodox believers. It was the largest Jewish city in Europe and the second in the world after New York. After invading Poland in 1939, Nazi Germany transformed Warsaw’s Jewish district into a Ghetto, to isolate and eventually wipe out the population. Half of the six mln Jews killed by the Nazis were Polish, and most died in Nazi concentration camps set up in occupied Poland, such as the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1945, Poland’s surviving Jewish population numbered just 280,000. Many emigrated to the U.S. or Israel, either immediately after the war or during waves of anti-Semitism in the 1950s and 1960s. Many Holocaust survivors who had been able to hide their Jewish identity during the war decided to keep it that way in the postwar era to protect the next generation. Others came from mixed Catholic and Jewish, or non-religious, families, where identity was not hard and fast. Another recent convert, Maciej Krasniewski, 20, adjusted his yarmulke skullcap as he recalled the day he learned he was Jewish. “I found out when I was 13,” he said. “I had got interested in my family’s name. Polish names ending in ‘ski’ can mean you have origins in the nobility, so I was looking up my roots. I asked my father, and he said: ‘Our real name is Kirschenbaum.’” Krasniewski’s paternal grandfather had survived the Holocaust, and the family picked a Polish name in 1954. Kransiewski said he took five years to When Ryszard Legutko replaced Giertych as education minister a few weeks before the end of the Law and Justice party’s two-year reign, he said he saw no reason for religion to be in the exam. One of the archibishops, Slawoj Leszek Glodz apparently thought it was a Law and Justice double-cross. On Aug. 18, he threatened an all-out war over the issue, and Legutko relented. The government drew up a plan to include religion in an exam to be given to 1,000 students at 50 schools in the spring of 2008. Then the Civic Platform party ousted Law and Justice in the national elections of late October. The victors said they would drop the idea of putting a religious component in the comprehensive exam. Church officials were apoplectic about the government turn-about. Archbishop of Warsaw Kazimierz Nycz demanded, and got, an audience with Deputy Minister of Education Krystyna Szumilas to discuss the issue. Szumilas said after the meeting that she saw no problem continuing work on the proposal. Tusk’s statement later that no decision has been reached on the issue suggested that the government could back away from it, however. The plan that church officials worked out with Giertych was to include religion in a list of subjects in the exam that high school seniors would not have to pass in order to obtain their diploma. The current education minister, Katarzyna Hall, said that if some students want to show a mastery of religious content by passing a religion section of the exam, the ministry should make the component available to them. Other Civic Platform officials oppose the idea. And the Left and Democrats party has threatened to sue if the Tusk administration decides to include a religion component in the exam. They believe convert to Judaism, due to both fears of public reaction and his lingering Catholic belief that it would be a sin. The spark for Krasniewski and his twin brother was a recent holiday. “We were standing in the middle of Prague’s old Jewish district, and we decided to convert,” he said. “At first there was a struggle in our family, to stop us going back to what they had escaped from,” he added. But the twins’ grandfather eventually warmed to the idea, and finally told them the story of the brothers and sisters he lost during the Holocaust. Krasniewski’s brother chose to become an Orthodox Jew, and follows a strict kosher diet. Krasniewski considers himself a conservative. He said he is still wary of wearing his yarmulke in public due to lingering anti-Semitism, but, borrowing a phrase from the gay rights movement, says he plans to. “It’s like coming out. We’re here, we won’t go away, get used to it. If you don’t do it, no one will know there are Jews in Poland,” he said. Poland’s “new Jews” also want fellow Jews, notably those from the U.S. and Israel who come to visit the sites of Nazi-era death camps, to wake up to the growth and even the very existence of their community and stop seeing Poland only as a vast cemetery. “Other Jews need to see the reality of Jewish life in Poland,” said Anna Janot-Szymanska, 37, who learned of her roots as a teenager and said she is still a “Jewish beginner” with a more cultural than religious interest. Her 27-year-old sister Malgorzata, who runs the Jewish center in Warsaw, wants visitors to come and meet with the growing community. “Out of the ashes of the Holocaust, there’s a spark,” she said. DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007 Foreign ministers hail new era in ties with Germany agence france-presse German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his new Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski said late last week they hoped to mend bilateral ties that soured under Poland’s former government. “We both said that we want to open a new chapter in German-Polish relations,” Steinmeier said after talks with Sikorski in Berlin. He thanked Sikorski for coming to Germany on his first visit abroad as the top diplomat in liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government. “We see this as a sign of your interest and willingness to play a role in breathing new life into the relationship between Germany and Poland.” Sikorski told reporters: “I would like to second every word of that.” Ties between the two neighbors suffered under nationalist Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who was soundly defeated by Tusk and his Civic Platform in October elections. Kaczynski missed few opportunities to reproach Germany over its World War II past. He told fellow EU leaders during a row about voting rights in the bloc this year that had the Nazis not invaded Poland it would today be a nation of 66 mln people instead of 38 mln. But while Steinmeier and Sikorski exchanged warm remarks, Tusk’s new advisor on relations with Germany, Russia and Israel sounded a warning over a simmering row triggered by German plans to honor those expelled from their homes in central Europe at the end of World War II, including Germans who were forced to flee modernday Poland. The project has the support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but has been condemned by Warsaw for failing to make a distinction between the victims and the aggressors in the war. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski said in an interview with Die Zeit weekly published on Thursday that he was saddened by Berlin’s plans to create a center in memory of those expelled after the war. “It does not suprise me but it saddens me,” said Bartoszewski, who is a survivor of the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp. “We should not create a situation which forces the new Polish government to react in the same manner as the old government,” he warned. Problems with school religious exam such a move would be unconstitutional because it would be inserting religion into the educational process. Education experts point out that universities use scores on the comprehensive exam to help decide which students to admit. Thus, these experts say, the Education Ministry should draft all questions on the exam. If a religious component is included in the exam, the experts say, the church will be deciding the questions, not the Education Ministry. That means the ministry will be ceding its authority for overseeing the exam to outsiders, these experts say. Tusk said that although he feels “great esteem for and sympathy toward Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz,” the decision about a religion component in the final exam will not be made in talks between government officials and “people from outside the government.” It will be made solely by government officials, he said. The arch-Catholic Giertych said the Law and Justice government did so much work on the proposal that backing away from it now would amount to breaking a promise to the Catholic Church and others who championed it. “Any change is impossible without consultation with the Conference of Polish Bishops,” he added. Left-leaning politicians detest the idea of a religion component in the exam. “It is a sign of primitive conservatism,” Jerzy Szmajdzinski, the deputy head of parliament, said in a radio interview. He is one of the leaders of the Union for Democratic Left Wing party. He maintained that politicians should promote tolerance, openness and respect for all religions but not be involved in forcing into the comprehensive exam a section that basically deals with one denomination – Catholicism. Introducing religion into the exam also would favor students wanting to go into university theology departments, he added. Beata Gorka, a spokeswoman for Catholic University of Lublin agreed that the religion-component results would help those interested in theology gain admission to universities that offer theology programs. What does the public think about the issue? The polling group PBS DGA reported that more than 61 percent of Poles it polled for the daily Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper opposed the idea of a religion component in the comprehensive exam. Thirtytwo percent supported the idea and seven percent were undecided. Thus public sentiment is running 2 to 1 against the idea. Schools do not require students to take religion courses. Students can choose to take religion courses, can choose to take ethics courses or can choose to take neither. Jaroslaw Zielinski, an MP and member of Law and Justice party’s chamber of ethics, said one out of three students at most schools take neither religion nor ethics courses. Tadeusz Bartos, a journalist who is also a theology expert, said on TOK FM radio that government officials should remember that they represent all Poles when they consider proposals to include such a religion component in the comprehensive exam. The notion that a decision about the issue might be made in private talks between an archbishop and a deputy minister is unacceptable, he said. There should be a public debate on the issue, he contended. The debate should include the question of “what is the function of religion as a school subject,” he said. Is that function instilling knowledge or proselytizing, he asked. If the main function of teaching religion is instilling knowledge, then there is a case for including it in the comprehensive exam, he said. If it’s to proselytize, then it is inappropriate to include it in the exam, he suggested.
DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007 P O L A N D The Krakow Post 3 Russia, Poland end meat dispute agence france-presse Russia’s agriculture minister late last week agreed to end a ban on Polish meat imports, removing a bone of contention between the historic rivals that has strained EU-Russian ties. “We are in complete agreement on resuming deliveries of meat products from Poland,” Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev told journalists in Moscow. Gordeyev was speaking after talks with his Polish counterpart Marek Sawicki, part of the government under Poland’s new liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has set out to improve relations with Russia since taking office last month. “An agreement will be signed next week in Kaliningrad between the veterinary services of the two countries,” Gordeyev said, referring to Russia’s westernmost province. “As soon as the memorandum is signed, deliveries will begin again.” The dispute is behind the Polish government’s veto on a wide-ranging EU-Russia partnership and trade agreement meant to smooth relations between Brussels and Moscow. Despite the apparent resolution to the meat problem, the Polish government said it would not remove the veto before the embargo was fully lifted. “There is no timetable. We are waiting for the signature of a document on the resumption of deliveries,” ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski told AFP. Vasily Likhachyov, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament, said Poland must now respond to the Russian gesture. “After the settlement of the problem of delivering meat from Poland to Russia, there is no basis for the veto,” Interfax quoted Likhachyov as saying. The partnership agreement is seen as particularly important in the EU because it will include provisions for energy relations as the EU increases its reliance on Russian oil and gas imports. Moscow imposed the meat embargo in November 2005, accusing Poland of shoddy food safety standards. Warsaw claimed the ban was groundless and a purely political move. Wednesday’s agreement was the latest sign of thawing of historically poor relations between Russia and Poland, frozen for the past two years under the conservative, nationalist government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Last week Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vowed to turn a new page in bilateral relations after meeting his new Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski in Brussels. Vancouver to make airport changes after Taser death agence france-presse Western Canada’s biggest airport announced changes late last week prompted by the death of a Polish traveler lost in the terminal for nearly 10 hours before panicking and dying in a violent police arrest. Robert Dziekanski’s case made world headlines after an amateur video of his death was released last month, showing police repeatedly stunning the distraught traveler with a Taser less than 60 seconds after they first approached him. It was in the secure international baggage zone, the size of two football fields, that Dziekanski apparently became lost after he arrived from Frankfurt on Oct. 13, while his mother waited for him on the other side of a wall in the public zone. To avoid such problems in the future, the airport will open an information center for travelers in the international baggage area, Vancouver Airport Authority president Larry Berg told reporters. As well, patrols of secure areas would be beefed up and signage would be improved, he said. Berg said the airport would set up easily identifiable, terminal-wide access to translation services, 24-hour in-terminal medical response, add a messaging service from the secure area to the public greeting area and improve signs with pictograms and multiple languages. Staff would also begin doing walkthroughs each hour in the area to try to identify lost or confused travelers and assist them. Berg said the changes follow a sevenweek review of “every aspect of our operations, from customer care to communication, safety and security, and even building design.” He said staff will continue to look at improvements in the future. In video released November 15, four police officers pile onto the Polish man as he writhes and screams in pain on the floor, then falls still within minutes. Dziekanski, 40, had arrived in Canada as a new immigrant who planned to join his mother. Multiple inquiries into his death include a provincial public inquiry, a police homicide investigation and an independent coroner’s inquest. The federal government also ordered a review of the police use of Tasers, while Polish prosecutors are also looking into the case. President at odds with new PM on Iraq: Tusk agence france-presse Poland’s new liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk admitted late last week to holding divergent views from conservative President Lech Kaczynski on Iraq and the proposed U.S. missile defense shield. “Concerning Iraq, the differences of opinion are quite serious,” Tusk told journalists following a one-hour meeting with the president aimed at ironing out any creases in their potentially awkward cohabitation. Tusk and his liberal Civic Platform dealt a stunning election defeat in October to Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw, the previous prime minister and current leader of the right-wing opposition Law and Justice party. In a speech outlining his policies to parliament on November 23, Tusk promised that Poland would end its current mission in Iraq by the end of 2008. Tusk said the president was not convinced that this was the correct course of action, but expressed confidence that he could win him round. Defense Minister Bogdan Klich has even indicated that the 900 troops Poland has deployed in Iraq could be back home by next summer. Tusk also said the two leaders held different views about Polish-U.S. negotiations on the installation of interceptor missiles as part of a U.S. missile defense shield. “The president is more enthusiastic than me, without there being a fundamental difference between us on this matter,” said Tusk. “The president is more determined (to find an agreement with the Americans), independently of what it costs Poland.” The U.S. plan calls for the installation of a powerful targeting radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland by 2012. Tusk also said the presidency had stressed the “good atmosphere” of the meeting. Germany, Poland seek truce on WWII remembrance the krakow post German Chancellor Angela Merkel said early last week she was receptive to a Polish proposal to build a World War II museum but defended a disputed war memorial center planned in Berlin. “It is an interesting idea,” Merkel told reporters after her first talks with new Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk since he took office last month, when asked about his idea for a museum in the northern Polish city of Gdansk. But she said the museum could not replace German plans to build a memorial center for the mlns of Germans expelled from central and eastern Europe after the war. “Our project is in no way intended to make light of the causes and consequences of World War II,” Merkel said, adding that a German delegation would travel to Warsaw soon to discuss plans for the center. Warsaw has raised concerns that the German project would fail to distinguish between the war’s victims and aggressors. Despite the differences over the memorial, Tusk said he was pleased that Merkel had underlined her rejection of individual bids by German expellees to seek restitution from Poland. “It is important to restore relations between our two countries to the same level as our own personal relations,” a smiling Tusk told a joint news conference with Merkel. Relations between the neighbors suffered under Tusk’s right-wing predecessor Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who missed few opportunities to reproach Germany over its Nazi past. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published last week, Tusk questioned plans to establish the Berlin memorial center and proposed the museum in his hometown of Gdansk, which was once the German city of Danzig. Some 14 mln Germans fled or were expelled, often brutally, from their homes in eastern Europe from 1944 as the Soviet Red Army advanced and Germany’s Nazi Third Reich crumbled. Around half of them lived in what is now Poland. Merkel and Tusk also discussed the planned “Nord Stream” pipeline from Russia’s Baltic coast to Germany and other European countries via the Baltic Sea. Poland, whose territory will be bypassed by the project, has raised environmental and other objections. Merkel said the German and Polish economy ministers would discuss the issue with a view to addressing Warsaw’s concerns.
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Local superintendent may change face of educational ... - Krakow Post

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