WARSAW, Poland, March 16 (UPI) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Poland Friday amid surging tensions between both governments.
Merkel arrived in Warsaw for a two-day working visit that includes talks with Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw, the prime minister. She is expected to touch on the U.S. anti-missile system and bilateral ties between the two countries.
Yet the atmosphere is expected to be gloomy after a series of diplomatic spats between the two governments, the latest caused by critical comments from a Polish government official.
A day before Merkel's visit, Mariusz Muszynski, the new representative for Polish-German relations, harshly criticized the state of ties between the countries. German-Polish relations were at a point "where the bilateral problems that have been kept secret for the past 15 years finally have to come up," he told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.
He also accused Berlin of being selfish and ignorant toward Warsaw, and cited a German-Russian pipeline project as an example of Germany's "anti-Polish" policies. The pipeline "not only gravely hurts Polish interests, but possibly also endangers the sovereignty of the Polish state," he said.
While Germany was Poland's most important advocate in its quest for NATO and European Union membership, bilateral ties have worsened ever since.
Merkel, whose government currently heads the rotating six-month EU presidency, has previously said that it was one of her foremost goals to improve relations with Germany's eastward neighbors.
