Warsaw- Poland's top economic policymakers met Tuesday to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis, while the main opposition party urged immediate action by the government.

The conservative Law and Justice party called for an agreement by political parties and the government to work with the national bank, financial regulators and labour unions to ward off damage to Poland.

Warsaw - Pakistani authorities have confirmed that a recently kidnapped Polish electrician is now in the hands of the Taliban, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.

Unidentified gunmen kidnapped a Polish employee of an oil exploration firm and killed his driver and two guards in northern Pakistan on Sunday, police in Islamabad said.

"The [Polish] Ministry of Foreign Affairs got an assurance that Pakistani forces are leading an intensive effort to free our citizen," said a statement from spokesman Piotr Paszkowski.

Warsaw - Former Polish leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski took the stand Thursday against charges of communist-era crimes, calling them baseless and saying martial law was needed in 1981 to avoid a Soviet-bloc invasion.

Jaruzelski, 85, read from a prepared statement in the Warsaw court, the stage for Poland's highest-profile effort to bring Soviet-era leaders to justice.

"The hard decision was motivated by a higher necessity," he testified to a room full of his former military aides and elderly former Solidarity members.

Warsaw  - Poland's government signalled Wednesday that European Union officials have refused privatization plans for its ailing shipyards and said it would ask Brussels for an explanation.

Workers at the shipyards on Poland's Baltic coast, birthplace of the Solidarity trade union that helped bring down communism, threatened to hold strikes.

Finance Minister Aleksander Grad's remarks came amid media reports that European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes rejected the Polish plan at a meeting with Grad in Brussels on Tuesday.

Grad stopped short of confirming the reports, but accused Brussels of failing to show good will in solving the dispute - an emotional one the historic connection with Solidarity.

Attock (Pak), Sept 29 : Unidentified gunmen kidnapped a Polish engineer after killing his security guard and two drivers near the Pind Sultani village of Jand tehsil in the NWFP province, yesterday.

The engineer works with the Geofizvka Krakow oil company.

Warsaw - Former president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa must pay 7,500 zloty (3,277 dollars) for calling another former union activist a "cut-throat monkey" and "sick moron," a Gdansk court ruled on Friday.

The court ruled Walesa had defamed Krzysztof Wyszkowski during a TV show in June, 2005, while discussing whether the Institute of National Remembrance should grant Walesa the status of victim of the communist security forces.