'God will judge' Jaruzelski, says Lech Walesa

General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's last communist leader who died today, was an "intelligent man" who had to make difficult choices, his former adversary Lech Walesa said.
Paying tribute to the man who once tried to crush his Solidarity movement, former union leader Walesa said the general was in an unenviable situation when Polish dockworkers rose up against communist rule in 1981.
"He probably knew very well the Soviet mentality, and their missile arsenal. He had the right to think, like many in the world, that there was no other way," the Nobel Peace laureate and former president said.
"His generation had to make difficult choices. Some adhered to the Communist treason, others tried to fight it from the inside."

Jaruzelski, who was 90, died in a Warsaw hospital earlier in the day.
Walesa said that in private, the General was a "very intelligent man, full of humour. I could listen to him for hours."

"I lost many battles against him, but I won the war for a free Poland. I do not know all his motivations, so I will leave the judgement to God," he said.
Jaruzelski tried to strangle Solidarity, the Soviet bloc's first free trade union, with a brutal military crackdown in 1981.
But he later became the first-ever communist leader to clear the way for democracy by agreeing to semi-free elections.