As early as on Friday, during the dinner inaugurating the Nato summit in Strasbourg and Kehl, President
Lech Kaczyński supported the candidature of the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, for the position of the Nato's new secretary general. According to Gazeta's sources, he spoke even before Turkey, which was expected to protest Rasmussen's candidature, and some of the other allies.
On Saturday, Defence Minister
Bogdan Klich said Mr Kaczyński had violated the government's instructions. And Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a meeting of the Civic Platform's National Board Saturday that the president had offered his support to a different candidate than the government had planned.
'We are not strong enough, we are not a power yet, to afford such mistakes', Mr Tusk said.
A fuss was kicked up over who had a better negotiating strategy, and whether the president had received instructions from the cabinet or not.
Ministers Klich and Sikorski met members of the Polish press in Strasbourg early on Saturday afternoon. They explained that the government's strategy was to delay offering Poland's support for Mr Rasmussen in order to bargain something extra.
'Had we not prematurely offered our support, consultations would be carried out with two countries today, not just one', stressed Mr Sikorski, referring to Turkey.
According to government sources, the instructions were for the president to stall for time so that Mr Rasmussen's candidature would not be agreed upon on the first day. Mr Kaczyński was not to adopt any clear stance on the Turkish opposition. If Turkey's veto were sustained, Poland was to propose Mr Sikorski as candidate and even if the candidature were rejected, there were good chances Poland would be offered something in return. At stake were reportedly a Nato communications battalion in Poland and a high-ranking position for a Pole in the secretary general's secretariat.
The government also wanted to show that it did not like the way the whole issue had been handled - Warsaw had not been consulted and it learned about US and other large countries' support for Mr Rasmussen from the media.
After the summit the president defended himself by saying that the matter had been a foregone conclusion anyway.
'Poland achieved a success, because it came out from friends with a man who, it was obvious, would become the Nato secretary general', Mr Kaczyński said.
Another controversy is whether the president had received instructions from the cabinet.
Minister Sikorski says he handed them to the president on the plane to Strasbourg, but Mr Kaczyński maintains those were 'two sentences thrown in between jokes'. And besides, the cabinet has no right to instruct the president anyway.
On Sunday the dustup continued.
The Foreign
Ministry revealed the negotiating instructions sent to the Presidential Chancellery. It said the government did not want to block Mr Rasmussen's candidature altogether, but wanted to 'demonstrate discontent, play for time (though not for long) and create a situation where they would have to talk to us and we could receive some compensation'.
The President denied receiving the instruction.
'Blaming me is just the other side's propaganda. The idea was such: if the president stalls for time, he will turn out a brake-puller again, and if Mr Rasmussen's candidature goes through, it will be the president's fault, because he didn't play for time', argued Lech Kaczyński.
'If Mr Sikorski's candidature had been officially submitted, if Mr Sikorski had not denied so stubbornly that he was or had been a candidate for the Nato post, if the emotions had not dominated here, perhaps there would have been a chance', he added.
'The problem is that this cabinet does not fight for Poland to be in the decision-making group'.
Zbigniew Chlebowski, leader of the PO caucus, said Sunday on Radio ZET: 'What the President did at the summit is enough to take him to the State Tribunal. It was a devastating blow to the cabinet's foreign policy'.
The president was defended by his brother,
Jarosław Kaczyński, the opposition leader: 'What we are seeing here is a nasty example of taking domestic disputes to the international level', he said, demanding that Mr Chlebowski take back the words about the State Tribunal.
According to
Aleksander Szczygło, head of the president's National Security Council (BBN), Mr Kaczyński tried to call the prime minister on Friday at 1.00, but Mr Tusk did not answer the phone.
Mr Tusk admits there was a phone call to the head of his chancellery. 'At 1 a.m. I sleep. I went to sleep with a clear conscience, because I knew at what time the negotiations were, at what time the meeting, at what time the summit'.
He added that if the president needed his help, he should have called him before the meeting, not afterwards.
Piotr Kownacki, head of the Presidential Chancellery, told Gazeta that the president had hoped to meet the prime minister before the summit.
The prime minister, in turn, stresses that the president 'was absolutely clear about the government's strategy'.
'Late on Friday afternoon I was told by Mr Sikorski that he was in constant touch with the president and that there was no doubt that the president knew what we were about', said Mr Tusk.
