For Poland, Mystery About Tyminski Deepens : Politics: Warsaw government says the emigre who will face Walesa in a runoff was issued visas in Libya.

Stanislaw Tyminski, the Polish emigre who will face Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in the Dec. 9 runoff election for president, was issued visas seven times in the 1980s from the Polish Consulate in Tripoli, Libya, the Polish interior minister said Thursday.

Tyminski, who runs an electronics firm in Toronto and has business interests in Peru, repeatedly has denied ever traveling to Libya.

Questions about the background of the 42-year-old novice politician are rife in Poland since his surprising second-place finish in the first round of presidential voting Sunday, when he knocked Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki out of the running, sending shivers through the country’s political establishment.

Krzystof Kozlowski, the interior minister, told The Times on Thursday that the ministry’s computer records show that Tyminski was issued the visas in a Canadian passport, presented at the Polish consular offices in Tripoli.

“I could not speculate on what he was doing in Tripoli,” Kozlowski said, “but our records show he was issued visas there on seven occasions.”

The first of the visas issued in Tripoli was in January, 1980, and the last in October, 1989, Kozlowski said.

Asked Tuesday whether he had received visas from the consulate in Tripoli, Tyminski replied: “I have never been there. I’d like to go sometime, though. I hear it’s a nice country.”

The Polish-born Tyminski emigrated to Canada in 1969, later moved to Peru and then back to Canada before returning to his homeland earlier this year. For much of the 1980s, Tyminski and his aides say, he was based in the Amazon River city of Iquitos, Peru, where he operated a river barge business, a restaurant and a firm that sells satellite television reception equipment.

Tyminski’s Canadian business, Transduction, Ltd., produces computer-control equipment for industrial uses.

Questions over Tyminski’s background and his hazy political beliefs--including an assertion that Poland’s political problems in the 1980s stemmed from “threats from within”--have led to a growing suspicion in political circles and among Polish journalists that Tyminski is, however bizarre the accusation may seem, a Communist agent.

Although suspicion over Tyminski resembles a plot outline for an improbable political thriller, many serious Poles regard it as plausible.

Walesa, addressing a Solidarity union meeting in Gdansk on Thursday, described the Tyminski campaign as a “a challenge from the old nomenklatura , security service and activists of old Poland who surround Tyminski.”

Kozlowski, who heads Poland’s security services, said he “can confirm” that a number of former Polish MSW (secret police) agents who worked under the old Communist regime had attached themselves to Tyminski’s campaign.

“I don’t blame them,” Kozlowski said. “They’ve been fired, or their jobs have been suspended, and they look to him with some hope.”

Kozlowski said Tyminski left Poland for Sweden in 1969, where he stayed illegally for several months before applying, at the Polish Consulate in Stockholm, for a passport renewal. The renewal was issued in 1970, after which, apparently, Tyminski went to Canada.

Persons familiar with Polish immigration procedures note that, in that period, when travel restrictions were tight under the Communist regime, it was highly unusual for Poles who had violated the provisions of their documents to be granted passports for unrestricted travel.

Polish journalists, in a press conference Tuesday, asked Tyminski about suspicions, printed in Polish newspapers, that he was an agent of the KGB, the Soviet secret police. Tyminski said the allegations--none of which were attributed to any reliable sources--were “lies.”

Also regarded as suspicious, diplomats and Polish journalists say, are Tyminski’s links with the Latin American correspondent for the Polish Communist Party’s newspaper, Trybuna Ludu, through the late 1970s and 1980s.

The correspondent, Roman Samsel, helped Tyminski write his book, “Sacred Dogs,” a wide-ranging work detailing his political views (Poland should arm itself with an arsenal of 100 one-megaton nuclear bombs) and mystical experiences in Peru (curing Indians of “evil spells”).

Although no one has made any accusations against Samsel, it was common during the Communist period for journalists who worked abroad to perform double duty for the security services.

During his election campaign, Tyminski capitalized on the government’s failure, through Mazowiecki, to win support for its program among young voters, farmers and small-town residents.

Many of these voters said they were attracted by Tyminski’s advertisements of himself as a self-made millionaire and a fresh face who was free of taint by the Communists or entanglements in the Solidarity movement’s internal fights.

His plans for Poland, other than to provide “stability,” remain vague. He won 23% of the vote.

Western sources say Tyminski remains a mystery. One diplomat called him “a tunnel with no light at the end of it.”

“Given that Tyminski came out of nowhere,” said another Western source, “a certain amount of paranoia is not surprising. But the intensity and range of the stories is unusual, even coming through the usual filters.”

One diplomat said he will be watching closely for the first post-election public opinion polls.

“If it looks good for Walesa,” he said, “everyone can relax. If it doesn’t, then this town is going to get even crazier than it is.”