TNAG-1156-FCO40-1436-Visits-by-FCO-Ministers-to-Hong-Kong-1982 — Page 168

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entire population. People could be made to go to their places

of work but not forced to be productive whilst there. The

precise role of the Soviet Union was unclear; it was inconceivable

that they had had no prior knowledge nor given any prior approval

to the imposition of martial law, but it was still not certain

to what extent they themselves had engineered it. The Soviet

Chief of General Staff had visited Poland shortly beforehand,

but so far there had been no direct Soviet military intervention.

The British Government believed that if the Poles could themselves

impose order, the Soviet Union would allow this without inter-

fering. But if the Poles appeared to be failing, there was a

danger that the Soviet Union would take a direct hand in events.

3.

Mr Atkins continued by outlining the attitude of the

They had:

Western allies.

(i) from the start and consistently thereafter made clear their

utter disapproval of the action of the Polish Army;

(ii) issued clear and frequent warnings against direct Soviet

intervention; and

(iii) considered how to help the Polish people without helping

the Generals.

(iii) was a very difficult problem. The countries of Western

Europe had decided that any undertakings or contracts to provide

assistance to Poland which were already operating before the declaration of martial law would continue; but all new arrange-

ments which had been under discussion with the Poles were now

at a standstill. These were mostly economic, including supplies

of food at special prices, credit agreements and the rearrangement

of debts. Mr Atkins said that no important decisions needed to

be taken immediately but that the Western Europeans should

decide before the end of January whether to resume discussion of these subjects with the Polish Government. At present the Ten

felt that since there was no evidence of direct Soviet involve-

ment yet, they would not be justified in taking measures against the Soviet Union. Some measures had of course already been

announced by the United States: these were useful in

demonstrating

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