Lech Walesa, former President of Poland and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is visiting the United States on a speaking tour. The Daily Times carried an article about his speech at Salisbury University in Maryland.

Power, respect, responsibility

SALISBURY — Former Polish president and Democratic activist Lech Walesa gently chided the United States in an address to more than 1,500 people at Salisbury University to think hard about the examples and leadership it is offering the world as the globe’s most powerful nation.

In a largely lighthearted speech, delivered in Polish with the help of an English interpreter, Walesa talked about America with fondness and respect, invariably calling it “the superpower,” and he demurred when a questioner asked if he specifically condemned America’s war in Iraq.

“I’m not saying that you are no longer the hope” for the world’s oppressed people, Walesa said, but he urged the U.S. and Europe to find solutions to world problems that did not involve resorting to violence.

“No longer, the empire of evil exists,” Walesa said, referring to the Soviet Union. “You are the only superpower left on the battlefield. … You have involved yourself in solving other people’s problems. Are you a political and moral leader in the world?”

Walesa, the president of Poland from 1990 to 1995, played a key role in the 1980s in ending that country’s Cold War-era dominion by Communist governments. He was the leader and public face of Solidarity, a Polish labor movement that acted as the opposition to Communism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1983, and spoke at Salisbury University at the invitation of the Center for Conflict Resolution.

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