World Notes: Nov. 18, 1985

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For months there had been rumors of an impending leadership shuffle in Warsaw. But after the shake-up was announced last week, power remained exactly where it had begun: in the grip of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. The Polish leader stepped down as Premier and then went before parliament to name as his successor Deputy Prime Minister Zbigniew Messner. Earlier, Jaruzelski had himself elected head of the Council of State, Poland's collective presidency. He will continue in his all-powerful role as Communist Party chief.

Jaruzelski's resignation was an attempt to signal that Poland's political crisis, which began more than a year before he declared martial law in December 1981, is ending. He can now devote himself to repairing the damage done by the defection of an estimated 1 million Poles from party rolls in the past five years. By promoting Messner, 56, an economist, to succeed him as Premier, he also underscored his intention to rebuild Poland's shattered economy while distancing himself from difficulties ahead. Noted one Western diplomat based in Poland: "He can now blame someone else when things get worse."

In Washington's view, the timing could hardly have been coincidental. Only weeks before President Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev were to meet in Geneva to discuss arms-control proposals, Moscow seemed to be stepping up its controversial arms shipments to Nicaragua. Said a high-ranking U.S. National Security Council official: "They are conveying a message to their allies that while they will be talking to us, they will not drop their friends."

U.S. officials were alerted to the shipments last month when routine satellite surveillance spotted five Soviet ships loaded with crates docked at a Nicaraguan port near Bluefields. On Oct. 31, their suspicions were raised further when an SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane photographed military equipment that is commonly used by the Nicaraguans being unloaded from other Soviet ships in the Cuban port of Mariel. The intelligence analysts say the deliveries included at least two batteries of SA-2 or SA-3 surface-to-air missiles, which reportedly will be installed at the Punta Huete air base near Managua. The Soviets also sent an unspecified number of Mi-8 troop transport and six Mi-24D attack helicopters.

The disturbing series of events began last week when an anonymous telephone caller claimed that Americans held hostage by the extremist Islamic Jihad in Lebanon would be executed. The next day a bundle of letters was delivered to the Associated Press office in Beirut. One was addressed to President Reagan and signed by four of the six missing Americans. That seemed to confirm that the four--A.P. Correspondent Terry Anderson; the Rev. Lawrence Jenco, a Catholic priest; Agriculturist Thomas Sutherland; and David Jacobsen, director of the American University hospital in Beirut--were still alive. Two others, Diplomat William Buckley and Librarian Peter Kilburn, are not accounted for and feared dead.