POLISH PREMIER PLANS TO RESIGN

August 17, 1989

Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak was expected to submit his formal resignation as Poland's prime minister at a two-day session of parliament Wednesday, Polish state television said. General Kiszczak said Monday he was abandoning his efforts to form a government because the Solidarity opposition had refused to become a junior partner in an administration dominated by the Communist Party.

As the political crisis mounted, tens of thousands of coal miners and other industrial workers staged a one-hour strike in southern Poland to protest food price rises imposed Aug. 1 by the Communist authorities.

Solidarity leader Lech Walesa softened his terms for entering a coalition government by saying the Communists could keep the defense and interior ministries in a coalition grouping the opposition with the pro-Communist United Peasants' Party and the Democratic Party.