Polish union renews strike threat

Lech Walesa, leader of Poland's controversial trade union, Solidarity, leaves no doubt he will call a strike Nov. 12 if the court reviewing its appeal for registration as an independent trade union rules unfavorably.

In an exclusive interview with correspondent Eric Boume, Mr. Walesa said: "We [Solidarity] are registered now, but not on our conditions.

"We cannot accept what the court did to our statute, and we will not accept it. The legal decision [by the Supreme Court Monday] must be satisfactory to us.

"I want to believe it will be, otherwise there is no other way -- only confrontation."

The high court has until Nov. 10 to decide whether the union's charter should stand as rewritten by the Warsaw district judge, who was originally in charge of registering Poland's new independent unions. That judge wrote phrases into the charter binding Solidarity to explicit acceptance of the Communist Party's supremacy in all Polish affairs.

Mr. Walesa repeated what he has said many times since the brief "warning" stoppage a month ago: "As a general rule, we don't want to strike. We have won the right, but we want to use it rationally and only as the very last resort when negotiation and everything else have failed."