NAMING OF PREMIER ENDS POLISH CRISIS

President Lech Walesa on Wednesday endorsed parliament's choice for prime minister and accepted her Cabinet, signaling the end of Poland's five-week government crisis.

Centrist lawmaker Hanna Suchocka is backed by a spectrum of seven parties descended from the Solidarity movement that represent a working majority in the deeply divided parliament, or Sejm. Parliament still must formally approve her candidacy.

Mrs. Suchocka will head a broad coalition government made up of the seven parties. Her Cabinet will include several free-market reformers, such as former Prime Minister Jan Krzysztof Bielecki.

Suchocka would be Poland's fifth prime minister in the three years since Communists lost power, and Poland's first woman government chief.

Relatively obscure outside parliament until last week, the lawyer from western Poland is a member of the centrist Democratic Union. She is a strong opponent of abortion, which helped her win backing from the rightist Christian parties in the coalition.