Foreign Minister's decision indicates "conflict" with President's office

Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz has cancelled the appointment of several new ambassadors just days before they were officially to take up their posts. The candidates, who include deputy ministers in the previous Cabinet, were approved by the last government, the President and the Sejm Foreign Affairs Commission and have gone through the entire training process. An anonymous friend of former deputy Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, who was named as ambassador to Belgium and then rejected by Cimoszewicz, says the decision is a sign of a "conflict between the Ministry and the President's Chancellery, as it was the President himself who designated Sikorski." A senior Foreign Ministry official says such decisions are unprecedented, because when the last government came into power it did not reverse appointments made by its predecessor. (Rzeczpospolita, Nov. 17-18, p. A3) T.J.