Polish president, opposition agree on early polls

WARSAW, Aug 9 (Reuters) Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and the head of the main opposition party, Donald Tusk, agreed today that elections in the autumn were ''unavoidable'', the chief presidential aide said.

Kaczynski held four hours of talks with Tusk, chief of the centre-right Civic Platform, to seek a way out of a political crisis gripping the biggest ex-communist European Union nation for four weeks.

''Both the president and the head of the Civic Platform party agreed that in the current situation autumn elections are unavoidable,'' Michal Kaminski told a news conference.

He said the two leaders agreed that before new polls take place, parliament should pass some urgent legislation such as laws allowing Poland to join the EU's border-free zone.

Poland plunged into a political crisis last month when the president's brother, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, fired his junior coalition partner, farm leader Andrzej Lepper, from the cabinet over a corruption probe.

The opposition promptly called for new polls to clear the air but the conservative Kaczynskis initially tried to save their coalition by persuading Lepper's Self-Defence party to abandon their leader and stay in government.

But Self Defence has refused to budge and threatened to leave the government at the next sitting of parliament on Aug.

22, prompting the Kaczynskis to signal they would rather face voters than run a shaky minority coalition.

Tusk was due to hold a briefing later today. Dissolving parliament two years ahead of schedule would require a two-thirds majority in the lower house, meaning it would need the consent of Kaczynskis' Law and Justice and opposition parties.

REUTERS AE RAI2216