Merkel visits Poland aiming to draw line under tense past
German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Poland today hoping to set the seal on a revitalization in cross-border relations since the election of Donald Tusk as Polish prime minister last autumn.
In her first official visit since Tusk came to power, Merkel will travel to the northern port of Gdansk, where talks between the two are expected to focus on next week's European Union summit and laying historical German-Polish tensions to rest.
Old wounds were reopened frequently during the previous Polish administration fronted by ex-prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whose twin brother Lech, remains president.
"German-Polish relations changed fundamentally for the better due to the change in government," said Sabine von Oppeln, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University. "In that sense, this has the potential to be a constructive trip."
Critics of the Kaczynskis accused them of fomenting anti-German sentiment linked to Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939. Bilateral strains acquired a personal flavor when a German paper billed the pair as "Poland's new potatoes".
Pawel Swieboda, head of demosEuropa, a pro-European think tank in Warsaw, said Merkel and Tusk would be keen to put an end to the angry flare-ups over World War II once and for all.
Efforts by conservative German politicians to commemorate the plight of millions of Germans expelled from eastern Prussia at the war's end have repeatedly aggravated lingering mistrust.
Tusk has proposed opening a World War II museum in Gdansk, birthplace of the Solidarity movement and his home city. But Germany's League of Expellees has said this should not be a substitute for their vision of a separate museum. Eastern European critics of the League's plan fear it may portray Germans as victims of a war which the Nazis started.
Another flashpoint is a Russo-German plan to build a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, circumventing Poland. Huge parts of modern Poland were once incorporated by Russia and Prussia.
Berlin's closeness to Moscow has much to do with Germany's reliance on energy imports, said political scientist von Oppeln.
"Yet in Poland, there's a very critical stance towards Moscow. Poland's government also wants countries like Ukraine to be brought into the EU while Germany opposes that," she said.
Tusk also said he expected support from Germany for Poland's desire to be granted a higher carbon dioxide (CO2) release quota under the EU's emissions trading scheme.
Poland, which is becoming an increasingly important trading partner for Germany, is heavily dependent on coal power.
Agencies
(China Daily 06/16/2008 page6)
