Bonn Links War Reparations to Border Issue

West Germany on Friday linked the thorny issue of guaranteeing Poland’s western borders with war reparations that Warsaw may demand from a reunified Germany.

Euphoria over the prospect of a reunified Germany has abated amid squabbling over borders. Poland was awarded large parts of prewar Germany by the victorious World War II allies.

Bonn said Chancellor Helmut Kohl has already proposed that the East and West German parliaments issue a resolution respecting the border with Poland after East Germany’s election March 18.

But government spokesman Dieter Vogel said such a joint German resolution must also state that Warsaw would not renege on a 1953 declaration in which it apparently renounced its right to reparations.

Vogel said the German parliaments, in assuring Poland’s border, should also request that last year’s joint statement by Kohl and Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki on the rights of ethnic Germans in Poland become a treaty.

It was one of the most blunt statements yet by Kohl’s government on Poland’s insistence on a secure western front.

In Warsaw, the Polish government responded by threatening to demand compensation for more than 1 million Poles enslaved by the Nazis during World War II.

Polish government spokeswoman Malgorzata Niezabitowska, speaking in Warsaw on Polish television, threatened to seek reparations “if the West German side wants to widen the matter” of resolving the border issue.

MOVING TOWARD GERMAN REUNIFICATION

Security. The U.S. Army said it has cut the number of patrols along West Germany’s borders with East Germany and Czechoslovakia, which for decades formed the “front lines” line of the Cold War. A spokeswoman at U.S. headquarters in Heidelberg, West Germany, cited changing East-West relations as the reason for the reduction. Citing security reasons, she declined to specify the number of patrols involved.

Protests. Hundreds of people demonstrated in six Polish cities to support Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s demand that Poland be allowed to take part in international talks on a reunited Germany, organizers said. The rallies were sponsored by an anti-Communist group. The government announced Mazowiecki will visit Washington at the end of this month to press his demand.

Moscow’s role. East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow, facing almost certain election defeat this month, will meet Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Moscow on Monday, the official ADN news agency reported. It said Modrow, a reform-minded Communist, will lead a delegation including opposition parties. The two leaders are expected to discuss German reunification.

U.S. role. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, reacting to complaints that smaller European nations were not being consulted, asked NATO foreign ministers for ideas about alliance discussions of German reunification. Baker’s request came in letters to all 15 foreign ministers of the other NATO nations, a State Department spokesman said. Several NATO allies, including Belgium and Italy, are said to be miffed at being frozen out of the talks.