January 24, 1996
Web posted at: 8:15 p.m. EST (0115 GMT)
WARSAW, Poland (CNN) -- Poland's prime minister Jozef Oleksy announced his resignation Wednesday, just hours after the Warsaw military prosecutor's office said it would investigate charges that he spied for Moscow.
Dressed in a midnight black suit, Oleksy addressed the nation in a televised speech Wednesday and said he was resigning because he was innocent. "I do not want to be accused of trying to hide anything by sheltering behind high office in the republic. I have nothing to hide," the former communist said.
His resignation appeared to be prompted by the military prosecutor's decision earlier on Wednesday to launch a formal probe into evidence gathered by Poland's UOP security services that he was an informer for the then-Soviet intelligence for more than a decade.
Oleksy said he wanted all materials against him to be published and welcomed the investigation as a means to clear his name.
"Dear compatriots, the propaganda against me and my party and the coalition continues, but the governing of the state cannot be disturbed," Oleksy said. "I have thought everything over and decided that my affairs and my fate must be put aside."
Oleksy has been waging a battle for political survival since outgoing Interior Minister Andrzej Milczanowski last month accused him in parliament of passing classified documents and other information to Moscow since the 1980s.
At the time Oleksy dismissed the spying charges as the spitefulness of outgoing President Lech Walesa's cabinet which, he said, could not accept that ex-communists had won the November general elections. He suggested that Walesa and his colleagues had fabricated the evidence against Oleksy.
Standing before the red and white Polish flag Wednesday, Oleksy said, "This is being done to change society's decision expressed in elections."
Walesa came to power in 1990 and lost the elections to Oleksy's ex-communist party colleague Aleksander Kwasniewski. Walesa told PAP news agency Wednesday that Oleksy's resignation was long overdue, and called the prime minister's counter-accusations "common villainy."
Clearly trying to recover the political initiative, Walesa said Oleksy's case should be seen in the wider context of the ex-communists' relations with Moscow.
"This is a wider problem and it does not only regard spying links but other friendships and cooperation," Walesa noted.
Oleksy has acknowledged being friends with a man who later proved to be a top KGB spy in Poland. But Oleksy claimed he did not know that man was an agent.
Until now, Oleksy had resisted calls by opposition parties and even from within his leftist coalition to quit. He had said he would consider resigning if a formal investigation was launched.
Oleksy said he would submit his resignation to President Kwasniewski, who was expected to accept it.
The 49-year-old Oleksy was the first former Communist to be Poland's prime minister since the Communist regime fell in 1989. He became democratic Poland's sixth prime minister in March.
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