n an interview with the daily Rzeczpospolita, Kaczynski slammed Civic Platform's decision to end resistance to an EU rights charter.

'It raises two threats: to our national identity and regarding property in Poland abandoned by Germans,' said Kaczynski, the twin brother of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski who must leave office next Monday after losing the election.

Kaczynski raised eyebrows in Poland by his silence on Civic Platform's major victory over the twins' right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party in the October 21 election.

Prime minister-in-waiting, Donald Tusk, has pledged to end the Kaczynskis' policies that often left Warsaw as the sole holdout at EU meetings.

At an EU summit in Lisbon on the eve of the election, the Polish delegation led by Lech Kaczynski argued that the EU charter went against deeply Catholic Poland's point of view.

The conservative government had also argued that the European Court of Justice could use the charter to force Poland to hand back confiscated German property—a major concern given that around a third of present-day Poland was part of pre-war Germany.

The president also expressed concerns about Civic Platform's plans to name Radoslaw Sikorski as foreign minister.

Sikorski was defence minister in the previous government, but was axed in February this year after falling out with the Kaczynskis. He later jumped ship to the opposition.

'Candidacies like this don't smooth the working relationship between the president and the government,' warned Kaczynski.

'I won't hide the fact that I supported Sikorski's sacking as defence minister. I haven't changed my mind since then,' he said.

He said his reasons for opposing Sikorski were a 'state secret'.

After he was fired, Sikorski accused the Kaczynskis of failing to rein in the head of Polish military intelligence, who was purportedly more interested in tracking down ex-communists than preparing for Poland's boosted peacekeeping deployment in Afghanistan.

Kaczynski also warned he would veto Civic Platform's plans to introduce asingle-rate 'flat tax' in place of Poland's current, complex system of tax bands, which was a key election pledge.

He said he would block planned reforms of the national anti-corruption agency, the CBA, which was the brainchild of the Kaczynskis but which critics alleged has acted like a secret police force for the conservatives.

'I hope I will only use the veto rarely, and only when I feel it is necessary to defend the interests of the state,' said Kaczynski, whose presidential term runs until the end of 2010.

AFP

Güncelleme Tarihi: 31 Ekim 2007, 18:11