Poland, Germany Agree on Border : Reunification: The settlement removes the last big obstacle to a single German state. Present frontiers will be preserved. The 2 nations will start economic talks.

Poland declared itself “entirely satisfied” Tuesday with firm new border guarantees, removing the last major obstacle to German reunification by the end of this year.

Polish Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski said he accepted assurances that a unified German state will sign a border agreement with Poland as soon as possible after reunification, which is expected to come Dec. 2 with all-German elections.

Tuesday’s agreement affirmed the present frontiers of Poland and Germany, and German representatives relinquished all German claims to territory that was incorporated into Poland after World War II.

Skubiszewski added that West Germany agreed to begin “economic talks” with Poland shortly.

He did not elaborate, but he and West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher insisted that Bonn had not bought Polish acquiescence with a promise of assistance for Warsaw’s troubled economy.

“As regards to the border between Germany and Poland, the two German states and Poland are equally satisfied,” Skubiszewski told a news conference following a session of the so-called two-plus-four talks on German unification. Poland was added to the usual six-nation conference for the border discussions.

At the same time, the foreign ministers of East and West Germany and the four victorious World War II powers--the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France--agreed in principle on the contents of a “final settlement” that would formally end the war and terminate all Allied occupation rights.

Legal experts from the six nations were directed to prepare a draft agreement in time for the foreign ministers to approve it at Sept. 12 meeting in Moscow.

If accepted by the foreign ministers, the draft would be ratified by a meeting of the 35-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe tentatively set for Nov. 19 in Paris. That would provide the symbolic stamp of approval by European states not represented in the two-plus-four process.

“The lion’s share of the substantive decisions are done,” a senior U.S. official said. “The devil is in the details.”

He said the drafting process could turn up new disagreements. But that appears unlikely.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl cleared the way for the accord Monday when they agreed on a formula that will permit a unified Germany to be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Moscow previously had objected to German membership in the alliance, which was established as a military counterweight to the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact alliance.

At a news conference following the two-plus-four session, a reporter bluntly asked the West German and Soviet foreign ministers how much money Bonn had agreed to provide to Moscow as the price for the Gorbachev-Kohl accord.

“It is not appropriate to talk of a price to buy Soviet agreement,” Genscher said.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze added: “There is no trade, and we’re not going to trade.”

However, a West German government official in Bonn indicated that economic aid was closely linked to the political settlements.

“We are very much interested in helping our eastern neighbors succeed in economic reforms--otherwise, political reforms won’t survive,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In Bonn, a triumphant Kohl told reporters that all major obstacles to German unification had been swept aside and that the way is clear for the two Germanys to hold combined elections in December.

“The practical problems which lay before us on the way to German unity have been solved,” he said.

The United States was left out of the final negotiations on NATO membership. And U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III was virtually ignored during the news conference, which focused on details of West Germany’s agreements with the Soviet Union and Poland.

But U.S. officials attributed Moscow’s change of heart to painstaking work by President Bush and by Baker, who repeatedly pressed the issue during two Bush-Gorbachev summits and dozens of other high-level meetings.

A senior State Department official said that the U.S.-Soviet dialogue is no longer a sterile ritual in which each side recites its position without paying much attention to the other.

“It is now much more give and take,” the official said. “Can you frame discussions in a way that serves their interest as well as ours?”

In substance, the border agreement that Poland’s Skubiszewski accepted Tuesday seems similar to assurances that Warsaw previously had branded as inadequate. However, the Polish official said East and West Germany agreed to rhetorical changes in the two-plus-four text that calmed Polish fears.

Although Skubiszewski declined to elaborate, U.S. officials said the key elements were:

Agreement by East and West Germany that a united German government will negotiate and sign a border treaty “as soon as possible.”

A declaration that Germany has no territorial ambitions toward any other countries.

Agreement by West Germany that, after unification, a provision of the West German constitution allowing other German states to join the Federal Republic will be eliminated. The article was intended to facilitate the unification of West and East Germany, but Poland was concerned that it could be used as a pretext to annex Polish territory that once was part of Germany. Areas such as Silesia and Pomerania are still home to many ethnic Germans.

A statement that West German laws that declare the border to be provisional pending a World War II peace treaty will no longer be considered valid. (Negotiators at the two-plus-four talks agreed earlier to draft a “final settlement” instead of a “peace treaty” because a formal treaty was not considered necessary 45 years after the end of the war.)

Firm endorsement by the two-plus-four powers of the present German-Polish border along the Oder and Neisse rivers. That line was drawn in 1945, in part to compensate Poland for areas in the east that it lost to the Soviet Union.

The Poles had demanded that a border treaty be signed before the four wartime Allies give up their rights in Germany, but they compromised on what amounts to a “solemn promise” that their borders will be guaranteed by a pact after unification.

The Bonn official said West Germany understands Poland’s concerns.

“The Poles have had a very bad experience with a strong Germany,” the official said. “It is very understandable that the issue of the border creates a lot of uncertainty and fear, because Poland in the past has been invaded and divided up.

“But we have proved over the past 40 years that we are firmly democratic with no expansionist goals.”

Skubiszewski said: “In my view, Germany has changed quite a lot. There are extremist movements, but they are fringe groups and quite small.”

GORBACHEV’S GAMBLE: The Soviet leader bets a united Germany will help Moscow. A8