Berlin - Poland and Germany remained at odds Thursday over climate targets, despite talks between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and visiting Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin.

Merkel said she hoped the differences would be settled at an EU summit in Brussels October 15-16.

Warsaw has opposed emissions-reduction targets proposed by the European Commission as too tough, and has called for Poland to receive a significantly larger allowance in the later phases of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

Warsaw - A 30-year-old Russian citizen was detained by Warsaw police on suspicion of taking part in an assassination attempt on Moscow's deputy mayor in 2002, the Polish Press Agency reported on Thursday.

Alikhan M - whose last name was withheld in accordance with Polish law - was detained Wednesday while taking a dog for a walk.

Police suspected him of using a fake alias and determined his real identity after contacting Russian officials.

Russian police had earlier determined the suspect might have fled the country for Belgium, France or Poland.

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.