Poland PM Donald Tusk visits Germany

BERLIN, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was in Berlin Tuesday for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on improving bilateral relations, Radio Polonia said.

In his first visit to Germany since he took the office Nov. 16, Tusk was to discuss issues that became strained during the Polish conservative government of former nationalist Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

The issue that perhaps had delivered a strongest blow to bilateral ties was Kaczynski's claim that Poland should be granted bigger voting rights in the European Union to make up for 6 million Poles that were killed by the Nazis during World War II.

Had Poland not suffered such a loss, its population would have been much larger and subsequently its voting rights bigger, Kaczynski argued.

Among outstanding questions were Germany's plan to build a memorial in Berlin to Germans expelled from Polish territory after World War II and claims by individual Germans for property they left in Poland.

A Russian-German agreement to build a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea and circumvent Poland was also on the agenda.