Talks Sought on Polish-German Treaty : Europe: East Germany’s leader challenges Kohl. Bonn says the March 18 elections must come first.

East Germany’s caretaker Prime Minister Hans Modrow on Wednesday challenged West Germany to begin talks on a formal Polish-German treaty.

“East Germany is prepared to do this immediately,” he said.

Modrow’s comments came during the last scheduled sitting of East Germany’s Communist-dominated Parliament before the March 18 national elections.

Modrow also joined in the international criticism of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s refusal to state clearly his acceptance of the present Polish-German border that runs along the Oder and Neisse rivers. He said the chancellor had been evasive and ambiguous in answering questions on the border, a stance that had stoked fears about German intensions.

Kohl caved in Tuesday to mounting pressure from both sides of the Atlantic and agreed to back an unconditional parliamentary declaration pronouncing the sanctity of the Oder-Neisse line.

Germany lost about 44,000 square miles of land east of the two rivers after World War II.

In his diplomatic retreat, however, Kohl fell short of accepting a proposal put forward by Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki for the two Germanys to begin immediate negotiations with Poland on a treaty guaranteeing the present borders. The treaty would then be signed and ratified by a reunited Germany. A group of U.S. senators proposed the same idea to both Modrow and Kohl.

The East German prime minister, whose party is widely expected to be defeated at the polls, said he is prepared to begin talks immediately with Kohl about a Polish border treaty as proposed by the U.S. senators.

Kohl’s chief spokesman, Hans Klein, responded in Bonn that the idea of such talks could only be discussed with a freely elected East German government after March 18.

In an interview with the West German daily Bild Zeitung, scheduled for today’s editions, Kohl dismissed Modrow as someone who will be history after the election.

However, government sources in Bonn indicated that initial inner-German contacts between senior foreign ministry officials on the unification issue scheduled for Friday here could also deal with ways to approach the border question.

The talks, which are said to be procedural, constitute the first formal contact between the two Germanys on the unity issue.

“There’s no secret that this subject is (already) being discussed at all levels and it could come up Friday,” a government official in Bonn said.

The four major victorious powers of World War II--the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union--are scheduled to meet for the first time next week in Bonn to begin their talks on German unification.

In his speech, Modrow also said that an outright annexation of East Germany by Bonn is unacceptable. Kohl has proposed that the quickest way of achieving reunification is if the East German Parliament to be elected March 18 votes soon after it convenes to adopt the West German constitution and, in effect, become part of West Germany.

But Modrow said that while reunification is natural and right, “it’s a question of unification, not anschluss or absorption. This view is completely shared in Moscow and not only there.”

Indeed, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze was quoted Wednesday by an East German weekly magazine, Neue Berliner Illustrierte, as saying that Kohl’s accession idea is an “extremely dangerous path, based on pure nationalism and not on democratic, equal and civilized forms.”

At home, the chairman of the opposition Social Democrats, Hans-Jochen Vogel, also criticized the chancellor.

“East Germany is not a leaderless territory to be annexed,” Vogel said. “There are 16 million people there who have struggled to win their freedom all by themselves. We need negotiations held in a spirit of partnership and equal rights.”

The final scheduled sitting of East Germany’s Communist-dominated Parliament was described by the country’s main evening news program as an important watershed in the country’s history.

The Communists are expected to do poorly at the polls. Unlike its neighbors, however, the end of Communist rule in East Germany undermines the basis for the country’s existence as a separate state.

In its final hours, the Parliament approved laws granting East German workers the right to strike for the first time and supporting private enterprise.