EUROPEAN UPDATE
New Polish prime minister replaces foes
Moving quickly to consolidate victory over political foes, President Lech Walesa and his new prime minister have replaced the heads of defense, intelligence, and television.
The decisions came within hours of parliament's dismissal Friday of Prime Minister Jan Olszewski's center-right Cabinet.
The parliament approved Mr. Walesa's nomination of Waldemar Pawlak (vahl-DEH-mahr PAHV-lahk), a farmer and head of the Peasants Party, as prime minister.
Mr. Olszewski had been feuding with the president for months, and on Saturday essentially accused Walesa and his supporters of firing him in order to protect a nest of Communist agents hidden in the government.
"There simply is a common front," Olszewski said in an interview in the newspaper Nowy Swiat. "It seems the Communists are returning to power."
With Walesa's support, Pawlak dismissed Interior Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who had provoked a furor last week by releasing a list of alleged former Communist police agents without supporting evidence.
Pawlak also replaced Defense Minister Romuald Szeremietew and the head of state television, Zbigniew Romaszewski.
Newspapers saw their dismissals as an indication that Walesa and Pawlak were concerned about the possibility of a coup during the transitional period.
Named acting defense minister was Janusz Onsyzkiewicz, a mathematician and longtime Solidarity spokesman when the union was banned under martial law. Andrzej Milczanowski, the former head of the State Protection Office, took over the intelligence office again as acting interior minister. Fighting flares in Sarajevo
Sarajevo shuddered today under one of the fiercest bombardments by Serb artillery in three months of ethnic war, and government forces reportedly launched attacks trying to break the siege.
Fighting in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina surged after the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army vacated its last barracks on Friday, leaving weapons behind. That gave Bosnian government forces greater fire power than they have had since fighting broke out following a Feb. 29 referendum in which Bosnia's majority Muslims and Croats voted to secede from Yugoslavia.
Fighting raged on all fronts around the city, which is precariously short of food and medicine owing to a Serb blockade. Czechoslovaks press for new government
Czechoslovakias's prime minister-designate, Vaclav Klaus, hampered by election results that could lead to the breakup of the country, embarked yesterday on the daunting task of forming a new government.
Although Klaus's party now has the most seats in parliament, the champion of the right wing is without strong natural allies following the failure of his expected partners - the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) - to win seats.
He may have to rely on Christian Democrat support, but the Christian parties in both the Czech republic and Slovakia have only a handful of seats. Slovaks pushing for greater autonomy or independence would be able to block everything they oppose.