Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government on Friday offered an eventual treaty guaranteeing Poland's western border after German reunification but said Poland must abandon any claims to war reparations. Such a pact also would be linked to Poland's pledge to protect the rights of its German minority, according to West German government spokesman Dieter Vogel. Polish Premier Tadeusz Mazowiecki said he was ``especially astonished that the question of the German minority has been brought up. We have settled this matter, and we keep our word.'' In his his remarks on West German television, the premier added, ``There are mutual obligations here, which also concern the Polish minority in Germany.'' Earlier, Polish government spokeswoman Malgorzata Niezabitowska told Polish television news, ``Poland did not wish to link the problem of treaty regulation of the border on the Oder and the Neisse with any other problems.'' ``But if the West German side wishes to broaden these subjects, we will raise the problem of compensations for over a million Polish citizens who were forced to work in the Third Reich during World War II,'' she said. Kohl has come under intense criticism abroad and at home for his stance on lands east of the Oder and Neisse rivers ceded to Poland after Nazi Germany's 1945 defeat. Poland wants reassurance that a reunited Germany will not seek to reclaim those lands, which make up one-third of present-day Poland. Kohl repeatedly has said Germans have no designs on that property, but has insisted that, legally speaking, final say can only come from a future united German government. Kohl has been reluctant to run the risk of angering arch-conservative voters needed to help his Christian Democrats win re-election in federal elections this December. But at the same time, his statements have drawn negative responses in Poland and a number of other countries, including the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Britain. Kohl for the first time on Friday openly said a treaty would be possible recognizing Poland's western border after a united Germany government comes into being. But at the same time he demanded that Poland's 1953 decision on war reparations be an element of such agreement, as well as Poland's assurance last year that the ethnic rights of its German minority would be guaranteed. In the statement delivered by Vogel, Kohl again carefully avoided stating outright that a united Germany would never lay claim to land ceded to Poland. According to Vogel, Kohl reiterated his support for both German parliaments passing an identical declaration pledging to respect the current borders after East Germany elects its first freely chosen parliament on March 18. Vogel said ``such a declaration must at the same time make clear that the Aug. 23, 1953, declaration of the Polish government, in which reparations against Germany are renounced, continues unchanged.'' The Western powers ended reparation collections from West Germany in 1952. The Soviet Union did the same for fellow Communist state East Germany a year later, while Poland said it, too, would not seek reparations. Vogel said that on the basis of such a border resolution by the German parliaments, ``a treaty between an overall German government with the Polish government should be concluded and be ratified by a united German parliament.'' In Poland, meanwhile, hundreds of people demonstrated in several cities Thursday and Friday to support Mazowiecki's demand that Poland be allowed to take part in international talks on a reunited Germany. Poland says in order to win an ironclad guarantee of its western border, it needs access to the so-called ``two-plus-four'' talks involving West Germany and East Germany as well as the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France. In Madrid, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher reiterated that the borders of a reunified Germany would be those fixed at the end of World War II. ``We have no claims as far as Poland is concerned, not now or in the future,'' Genscher said. Genscher, in Madrid to allay Spanish concerns about plans for German unification, also said he and Kohl were in ``total accord'' on the issue. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said Secretary of State James A. Baker III sent a letter to all NATO foreign ministers inviting their views on German reunification. ``As you know, all of us have agreed that Germany's continued membership in NATO, including participation in NATO's integrated military structure, and the continued commitment of NATO forces to the security of Germany is of enduring importance to stability and security throughout Europe,'' she said.
