WARSAW, Poland, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- Germany's chancellor candidate Angela Merkel said during her stay in Warsaw she wants to "significantly improve German-Polish relations," if elected.
Merkel met with Donald Tusk, presidential candidate of the conservative Polish Civic Platform, which is leading in public opinion polls. Both politicians promised that the relations between both countries would better if their parties would lead their respective countries.
"There will be no axis Paris-Berlin-Moscow that would put strain on Poland," Merkel said in an apparent reference to German Chancellor Schroeder's foreign policy partners.
"That is a statement we have long waited for," Tusk said. Such a "truly European" position to Russia and Belarus could foster a political ambiance in which "no European state is tempted into pushing individual political goals for the East," he said.
Tusk is a bit more critical, however, when it comes to plans by Berlin to build a memorial center to Germans expelled from Eastern Europe after World War II. More than 12 million Germans were displaced after 1945 when the Communists claimed power in Eastern Europe.
He is one of several Polish officials who fear Germans want to rewrite history.
Merkel supports the center, but said she takes very seriously the concerns Poland has, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported Wednesday. "The suffering of the Polish people under the Nazis and World War II will not become less great because of the center," she said.
