The World - News from Dec. 12, 1988

Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, in Paris on his first trip abroad in seven years, visited four national unions but snubbed France’s largest labor federation, the Communist-led General Confederation of Labor. Walesa met with leaders of the smaller French Democratic Confederation of Labor, the French Confederation of Christian Labor, the Workers Force and the General Confederation of Cadres, thanking them for their support over the years and urging East and West Europe to come together in peace. The Communist-led federation, currently leading a strike that has snarled public transit in Paris for weeks, backed the Polish government’s 1981 martial-law crackdown on Solidarity.