
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990                   TAG: 9003032512
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BONN, WEST GERMANY                                 LENGTH: Short

KOHL LINKS BORDER, WAR-DEBT PLEDGES

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 . . . 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."

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.

by CNB