POLAND: Sweeping investigations into corruption and collaboration with the communist secret police are gripping Poland, and threaten to cut a swathe through its political elite.
Mr Jozef Oleksy, the leader of the ruling party and parliamentary speaker, was forced to resign this month after declassified files showed he had hidden his past role as a security agent in communist Poland.
Now a parliamentary committee wants to open the files of President Alexander Kwasniewski and dozens of other top officials, while a former figurehead of the pro-democracy Solidarity movement stands accused of informing on her old allies.
Unlike several of its neighbours, Poland has only gradually opened the archives on its decades as a Soviet satellite, but public pressure is growing for definitive information on exactly who did what for the country's communist rulers.
The request to open Mr Kwasniewski's casebook comes from a panel investigating whether an alleged Russian spy influenced the sale of a major Polish oil refinery to a Russian firm, through his relationship with a close friend of the president.
A senior member of that panel, Mr Roman Giertych, says the scandal has its roots in the communist-era secret service, and demands that the files be opened to serve what he calls "a political struggle to cleanse public life of former agents and collaborators".
Mr Kwasniewski, who has won powerful friends in Washington for his support for the war in Iraq, has agreed to testify before the panel. Meanwhile, Ms Malgorzata Niezabitowska, whose striking looks made her a popular spokeswoman for Solidarity, is accused of informing on her colleagues to the secret police.