Kohl Backs Down on Polish Border Demands

Chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose statements on Poland’s border triggered international unease about German unification and a crisis in his Cabinet, today backed down from a demand that a border treaty be linked to Polish concessions.

Kohl’s government agreed to introduce a resolution in Parliament saying a united Germany should sign a treaty promising that it will never lay claim to Polish land, said the chancellor’s chief of staff, Rudolf Seiters.

The proposed resolution, to be introduced Thursday, is the closest the West German government has come to assuring Poland that a united Germany would never seek to recover land lost after the 1945 defeat of the Third Reich.

Kohl has been reluctant to make such a statement, apparently fearing that he would lose the conservative vote in December elections. He has said he cannot speak for a united Germany.

His recent statements on the border issue have stirred unease in Poland, the Soviet Union, the United States and elsewhere, just as the chancellor was seeking international support for German unification.

His statements also caused controversy at home. The opposition Social Democrats and Kohl’s coalition partners, the Free Democrats, charged that he was jeopardizing chances for unification.

Last Friday, Kohl heightened the dispute by demanding that any treaty recognizing Poland’s borders be linked to Warsaw’s waiving any war reparations and guaranteeing the rights of its German minority.

Those statements caused a crisis in the Bonn government. Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s Free Democrats agreed with Poland that Kohl must make clear guarantees to Poland.

Torsten Wolfgramm, a high-ranking official with the Free Democrats, confirmed today that Kohl has abandoned his demand that a border treaty be linked to any assurances from Poland.

“It is completely clear. A treaty would contain only the border question,” Wolfgramm said.

Seiters said that, once Germany is united, its government would forge a treaty with Poland guaranteeing its current borders.

Seiters said the resolution to be introduced in Parliament on Thursday will call for a declaration by both Germanys on respecting Poland’s western border. That would occur after East Germany’s March 18 elections, he said.