ABSTRACT
3. The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Waldegrave) said that rapid developments were continuing in Eastern Europe. In Czechoslovakia, there were to be elections next year and the majority of the Ministers in the interim government were non-Communists. A complicated and potentially fraught situation was building up over the election of an interim President of the Republic. The elections might be carried out by the Federal Assembly which was still dominated by the Communists. Support for Mr Vaclav Havel was increasing and he was the strongest candidate to become interim President. However, the Communists might propose Mr Alexander Dubcek. He was a Communist and a somewhat outdated figure, so that such a proposal could spark off strikes and demonstrations. In Bulgaria the new Party Leader, Mr Petar Mladenov, had made a surprising commitment to allow free elections by June 1990. He had also proposed the abolition of the leading role of the Party. In Poland the new government was likely to sign a Letter of Intent with the International Monetary Fund by the end of the week. The Solidarity Leader, Mr Lech Walesa, had issued an unexpected call for ‘special powers’ which were probably intended to call speed up implementation of the government’s austerity measures, to which he was giving useful support. Nevertheless, his call carried unfortunate echoes of the demands for special powers made by General Pilsudski in the 1920s. 2 The Hungarian Prime Minister, Mr Miklos Nemeth, had just visited London where he had seen the Prime Minister and other Ministers. 3 He had given an impressive account of his government’s determination to press ahead with the necessary economic measures. He was having considerable difficulty with the present Parliament, whose Members had been elected under the old system. They were now trying to increase their popularity by adopting populist positions. Finally, the situation in East Germany was the most difficult and dangerous. In demonstrations in the streets there had been increasing calls for reunification.
