POLAND: Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has said tensions between Warsaw and Berlin could be resolved with a treaty relinquishing all compensation claims arising from the second World War.
Relations between the two countries have suffered since a private organisation, the Prussian Trust, announced plans to seek compensation for land and homes lost in what is now western Poland after the postwar border was moved westwards.
In retaliation, Mr Kaczynski's brother Lech, as mayor of Warsaw, commissioned a study that claimed the Nazis caused €45 billion worth of damage during the occupation and destruction of the Polish capital in the second World War. He said the report was a "weapon against demands for compensation" from Germany.
"It is high time to end the problem of claims. It is a question of political will on both sides. Poland is ready in any case," said Jaroslaw Kaczynski in today's Bild newspaper, ahead of a meeting in Berlin this morning with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The German government has insisted that the Prussian Trust enjoys no political or financial support from it and that compensation claims are groundless.
The Kaczynski brothers beg to differ, suggesting that Germans' increased interest of late in the often overlooked violent expulsion of 15 million Germans from eastern territories after 1945 is proof of an increased threat of compensation claims.
The two leaders will discuss a new undersea gas pipeline being built between Russia and Germany, a source of huge anger in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic countries. They fear the new pipeline will allow Moscow, through its Gazprom monopoly, to play politics with gas deliveries to central European countries without affecting western European supply.
"Energy policy can never be allowed to be used as a political weapon," said Mr Kaczynski. "Poland and the Baltic countries feel ignored over the pipeline project."