Former Polish President General Wojciech Jaruzelski on Sunday apologised for the first time for ordering Polish troops to take part in the Moscow-led crackdown on the Prague Spring socialist reform movement in 1968.
Speaking to Czech state television on the 37th anniversary of the crackdown, Jaruzelski, Polish defence minister at the time, said the invasion of another Warsaw Pact nation was "very painful for me".
"But, in 1968, I was the defence minister implementing a political decision, convinced that there were grounds for that on the basis of the information available to us then. Today, and naturally much earlier, I realised this decision had been incorrect, wrong, shameful. As I took part in implementing it, I am now offering my sincere apologies."
Soviet troops and soldiers from four communist bloc countries stormed into Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968, to halt a liberalisation movement led by Czech Communist party chief Alexander Dubcek, fearing they might provoke a wider pro-democracy push. Eighty people were killed.
After the invasion, the Soviet Union helped install a hardline leadership which dismissed reformers from the party and some jobs, and suppressed human rights and opposition movements.
The Soviet army occupied Czechoslovakia until 1991, two years after the Velvet Revolution peacefully overthrew communism.
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