Lech Walesa, whose Soldidarity trade union helped bring down communism in Europe, called Tuesday for a new Marshall Plan.

Lech Walesa, whose Soldidarity trade union helped bring down communism in Europe, called Tuesday for a new Marshall Plan to help develop the fragile countries left in its wake. "I have to say, paradoxically, that the situation after the Cold War is worse than after the Second World War," said Walesa at a conference held as part of the twentieth anniversary of the strike by Gdansk shipyard workers in August 1980 that led to the establishment of Solidarity. Walesa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his handling of the strike and later became Poland's first post-communist president, said the West was surprised by the fall of communism and still has not found an adequate response. "We need a new Marshall Plan. Not especially for Poland, the Czech Republic or Hungary, we get by more or less, but for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus," said Walesa at the conference on the role of Solidarity in politics in the twentieth century. Three days of ceremonies are being held in Gdansk to commemorate the anniversary of the strike, including the opening of a new exhibit at the shipyard on the strike, a congress of the trade union and many concerts, exhibitions, as well as an open-air showing of Andrzej Wajda's celebrated film of the 1980 strike, "The Iron Man."