Polish chief drops in on Hungary

Polish Communist Party leader Stanislaw Kania arrived in Budapest Thursday for a previously unannounced visit to Hungary, the official news agency MTI reported. Mr. Kania, who made similar visits to East Germany and Czechoslovakia last month, was met at the airport by Hungarian Communist leader Janos Kadar.

Western diplomats viewed the two earlier trips as an attempt to quiet strong criticism of Poland in Czechoslovak press before the recent Soviet Party congress. Hungary has been more low-key in its coverage of the Polish labor crisis.

Meanwhile in Poland, workers threatened a strike only 20 miles from the Soviet border, joining a sit-in and other strike alerts in ignoring the largest Warsaw Pact maneuvers since the year after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Neither the number of troops nor the duration of the Alliance 81 exercise was announced.

The local Solidarity union chapter in Suwalki, a northern town of 30,000 just 20 miles from the Soviet border, said it had announced a strike alert over complaints about the local health service -- adding its protests to a strike alert by timber workers and a sit-in by farmers.

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