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The construction industry itself is scheduled for major modernization. Agricultural investment has been accorded a higher priority. Social services are to be increased, and new hospitals and health centers are to be provided for both urban and rural areas.

Gierek's innovation in the foreign policy field have been less dramatic, largely because the situation inherited there was basically satisfactory. Even though Gomulka ultimately failed to take full advantage of his achievements, he had forged an acceptable new relationship with Moscow, won Poland the place of first among equals - behind the Soviet Union - in Warsaw Pact councils, and pioneered in establishing useful contacts and cooperation with the West. While he had gradually entered into a bitter feud with East Germany's Walter Ulbricht, he had been largely successful in overcoming the chill in Warsaw's relations with Belgrade, Bucharest, Prague, and Budapest that had resulted from the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (and from Hungary's only half-hearted participation therein). Finally, his hard-won agreement with West Germany in December 1970 had laid old fears about the Oder-Neisse frontier to rest and had substantially increased Poland's room for maneuver.

For Gierek, who shares Gomulka's conviction that Warsaw's and Moscow's basic interests now generally coincide and that Polish policy must rest on active membership in the Soviet Union's alliance system, there was little that needed to be done except to build upon his predecessor's work, resolve Warsaw's differences with Pankow, and give Poland's foreign policy a slightly more assertive and independent cast. The relatively relaxed atmosphere in both halves of Europe which has resulted from Moscow's drive towards detente with the West - and Walter Ulbricht's timely retirement - have been of great help to Gierek here. Relying heavily on summit diplomacy, he has restored Poland to its former position of special grace within the Warsaw Pact and has developed especially close bilateral ties with East Germany and Czechoslovakia. He has nursed Warsaw's warming relationship with Bonn through the ratification of the Polish-West German agreement and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations. As part of his effort to stake out a larger role for Poland in European and East-West affairs, he has hosted Presidents Nixon and Tito in Warsaw and has traveled to Paris himself. Speaking as a man who has spent more than 20 years of his life in France and Belgium, he has appealed to people of Polish birth or parentage everywhere - particularly in the United States where the Polish community is several million strong - to support the renovation of Poland with their talents as well as with their money. And although he has voiced his disapproval of Romania's ostentatiously independent behavior, he allowed the notion advanced by a leading Polish commentator that the "role of the middle powers" (read: Poland) "increases proportionately to the progress of detente in East-West relations" to pass unchallenged.

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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070027-9