Germany and Poland to Sign Border Treaty This Month

The leaders of Poland and Germany said today a treaty confirming their present border will be signed this month, settling decades of debate over the frontier and ethnic Germans in Poland.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl made the announcement at his summit with Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, their first meeting together since German unification on Oct. 3.

Kohl said the treaty will be signed before the end of the month in Warsaw, but he did not give a specific date.

“We are deeply convinced that real peace will be possible only if Germans and Poles march together along this road into a peaceful future,” Kohl said.

“We want this border to bring us closer and not to divide Europe between the developed rich and the poor,” Mazowiecki said.

The border along the Oder and Neisse rivers, established by the victorious World War II Allies in 1945, gave Poland 40,000 square miles of German territory as compensation for an even larger portion of Poland taken by the Soviet Union. Many Germans had continued to question the border, hoping for a return of the Silesian, Pomeranian and East Prussian lands that comprise about a third of present-day Poland.

Before the meeting began, Germany forgave nearly $500 million in loan payments owed by Poland.