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A delegation from Nationalrat of the Republic of Austria, headed by its chairman Heinz Fischer, paid a one-day visit to Poland.
On December 10, Sejm Marshal Józef Zych met with Heinz Fischer and other delegation members.
"Our second meeting this year confirms the importance we attach to mutual contacts and it should constitute and additional incentive to the launching of joint initiatives," Zych said during the meeting. We also voiced the conviction about the need of institutionalising the parliamentary forms of cooperation.
The talk focused on the date and terms of a Warsaw meeting of the initiating group, made up of chairmen of parliaments of Austria, Italy, Hungary and Poland, who are to decide on the venue and subject of next year's conference of chairmen of parliament of Central European Initiative countries. Zych and Fischer also spoke about matters related to the organisation of lectures by Austrian politicians and experts on the restructuring of agriculture and some branches of industry and on problems of preserving national identity.
The Austrian visitor also met with Senate Speaker Adam Struzik.
The chairman of the Austrian parliament was received by President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, with whom he talked about Polish-Austrian relations, assessed positively by both sides. Other topics raised during that meeting included problems of European security and the planned enlargement of NATO and the European Union.
Fischer also met with Vice Premier Miroslaw Pietrewicz, held talks with Deputy Bronislaw Geremek, chairman of the Sejm Foreign Affairs Committee, and met with members of the Polish-Austrian Parliamentary Group.
During a news conference at the end of the visit, Heinz Fischer said that Austria's neutrality can be reconciled with its present membership of the European Union, which is going to pursue a joint foreign and security policy in the future; however, that neutrality could not be reconciled with membership of a military alliance.
Fischer emphasised that Austria was going to support Poland's efforts to secure admission to the European Union, adding that his country supported the principle that every country was free to decide about its foreign policy and its security.
He explained, in reply to questions, that the EU's joint foreign and defence policy was going to be implemented in such a way that all the decisions that might infringe on the principle of neutrality must take into account the special characteristics of individual EU members. This question is guaranteed by Austria's agreement on its EU membership.
Sejm Marshal Józef Zych informed the media about the details of his earlier meeting with a personal envoy from Syamyon Sharetski, chairman of the Belarusian parliament.
Sharetski's envoy, whom the chairman personally asked Zych to receive in a telephone conversation, delivered a "personal, hand-written letter" from the Belarusian parliamentary leader and informed the Marshal about the current situation in his country, thanking for earlier cooperation and asking for "support in the international arena."
Zych was told about the establishment in Belarus of the national congress in defence of democracy, headed by Sharetski himself.
The Sejm Marshal reminded the envoy about his talks with the Council of Europe and Polish representatives to it, and also about the position of the Council, which is going "to honour the Belarusian representation, but only the one sent by the parliament that had been toppled."
Zych assured the envoy about the moral support and the uniform attitude of the Polish government, parliament and the president on the developments in Belarus. He also promised to talk about the matter at the European Parliament.
On December 10, 1996, Sejm Marshal Józef Zych received a farewell call from Yuri Kashlev, the outgoing ambassador of the Russian Federation to Poland.
Marshal Zych thanked Yuri Kashlev for his six years' long diplomatic mission, emphasising that it took place at a time of fundamental socio-political transformations in both Poland and Russia. Kashlev remarked that this was a very interesting period of time although occasionally it was a hard time, too. He said that relations between Russian and Poland have evolved "from fraternal to normal" and emphasised that during the last two years, the two countries have signed over a hundred bilateral agreements and more than 160 Russian delegations of varying rank visited Poland. The ambassador highly assessed the current state of bilateral relations, adding that there were immense prospects of their development, especially in the economic field.
On December 4, 1996, Sejm Marshal Józef Zych received Andries Bouckaert, the new Belgian ambassador to Poland.
On the same day, Zych received Mohammad Taheri, the new ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Poland.
On December 4, Sejm Marshal Józef Zych and Deputy Marshal Olga Krzyżanowska received Rafael Pineda Ponce, vice chairman of Congress of Honduras.