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Cardinal Jozef Glemp, 83, the spiritual leader of Poland's Roman Catholics for 25 years who helped steer his nation through a relatively peaceful transition from communism to democracy in 1989 but who was dogged by allegations of anti-Semitism, died on Wednesday in Warsaw. For a thousand years, the church has been a repository of nationhood in overwhelmingly Catholic Poland, and for decades Glemp, as the archbishop of Warsaw and Gniezno and the primate of Poland, was both mediator and power broker in the struggle between the Communist government and the resistance led by the Solidarity labor union. His approach was nonconfrontational, urging calm when the government declared martial law in 1981 and even when state security officers killed a popular dissident priest in 1984. Through repeated crises, Glemp was an ally, though a fitful one, of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. NEW YORK TIMES