Transcript for:
Poland's Crisis: State of Emergency Declared

This is a CBS News special report from Washington. Here is CBS News national correspondent Bob Schieffer. There's been another development on the situation in Poland. The Polish Communist Party leader Jaruzelski declared tonight that he was calling a state of emergency and said his country, quote, was in a state of war.

Therefore I am signing today an executive order that will put in place a set of measures designed and aimed against the machine....raided the Solidarity Union headquarters in Warsaw and arrested at least one high-ranking......more than 20 hours since the military took over, a move they said to prevent civil war. Tonight their grip on the country is tighter than ever. Poland now......and he said we are not days but hours away from catastrophe.

By then his armed forces... The message was obvious. Curb solidarity, or there is worse to come.

Communications with the East as well as the West have been cut off, and that includes the Soviet Union. Continuing to monitor the situation in Poland tonight, where authorities have now set a maximum penalty of death for... Now speaking for the entire staff, this is Wally Parker wishing you a pleasant good night.

...and I come to you today as a soldier and as the head of the Polish government. Understand that their own survival and certainly the rebuilding of their economy may depend on lives with their neighbors Western world Thank you for watching. ...pressed out of all the documents that have been published in the last few years, published by our trade unions. Poland struggled to be Poland and to secure the basic rights we often take for granted demonstrates why we dare not take those rights for granted. ...port where the president is vacationing, White House spokesman Marlon Fitzwater said, while the U.S. is very positive about the remarkable changes in Poland, it is concerned about the fragility of the process....to support democratic movements, free trade unions in Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania.

He will not be offended by Poland or all of us, but he will be a man who fits into these great tasks and challenges that are ahead of us. Strengthening an alliance that now clearly is better preserved to keep the peace and preserve our security into the 21st century. President of Poland along with his wife and some of the country's most prominent civilian and military leaders were all killed when their plane crashed in Western Russia. Anxiety should be much soothed by Joe Biden's tough talk.

Well, we generate 85% of the Union's GDP. We are more progressive, we are more open, more transparent than some of our governments. And we really need support of the European Union to create the right networks and actually to realize the priorities which are ours and which are that of the European Union. The European Union is a European Union. The European Union is a European Union.

The European Union is a European Union. The European Union is a European Union. The European Union is a European Union. Whereas many of our friends and allies in Europe are not doing it. So the most important thing is that we need to spend more money on defence, because deterrence is absolutely key.

We need to also have our own capabilities as the European Union, so we need to invest in that. Subtitles by the Amara.org community