WARSAW (AFP)



Bronislaw Geremek, an icon in the struggle against communist rule in Poland and founding member of the Solidarity trade union, died in a car accident Sunday, local police reported. He was 76.

Geremek, a Euro MP and leading scholar of medieval history, was a legendary figure in the anti-communist opposition and in the post-communist era served as foreign minister between 1997 and 2000.

He was elected to the European Parliament in 2004 as part of the list of Solidarity, the trade union group that led the opposition before the fall of Poland's communist regime.

Poznan region police spokeswoman Hanna Wachowiak said the car in which Geremek was travelling suddenly crossed to the other side of the road before hitting an oncoming vehicle near the town of Lubien.

Geremek came to international attention as Lech Walesa's chief negotiator in the 1989 round table talks in which General Wojciech Jaruzelski's communist regime negotiated away its power.

As well as being foreign minister, he headed the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe in 1998.

He courted controversy last year by refusing to file a statement saying whether he had ties to the communist-era secret police.

He denounced the new law as "creating an Orwellian-style ministry of truth" in Poland, but his defiant stand led to him being removed from an honorary post there.

Polish authorities also threatened to strip him of his mandate as a Euro MP before the country's constitutional court decided he could retain his European mandate.

Geremek was one of 700,000 public sector workers sucked into an anti-communist dragnet when the government extended a decade-old vetting law.

Under the rules, failure to declare whether they collaborated with the secret police could lead to the sack.

His case provoked strong reaction in the European Union, especially in France, while the European Parliament also rallied behind him.