Reparations Row Runs On

Warsaw's influential mayor Lech Kaczynski has said that Germany should pay $45 billion (24.4 billion pounds) for the destruction of Warsaw during World War Two, if Poland is hit by threatened war-related German property lawsuits.

Kaczynski, who leads the rightist Law and Justice Party with his twin brother Jaroslaw, has been the most vocal critic of plans by some Germans to sue for compensation for being expelled from land awarded to Poland from Germany after the war.

"We have not started the war," Kaczynski told a news conference on Monday at which he presented a city-commissioned study evaluating damage Warsaw sustained in the war.

"German claims in essence amount to saying it is Poles who must pay for World War Two," he said.

The issue of wartime reparations have become a thorn in relations between two neighbours who are also the biggest new and old member of the European Union.

It has reopened old wounds and revived anti-German feelings in Poland, attacked by Germany in 1939. Six million Poles, including 3 million Polish Jews, were killed by the end of the war in 1945 -- the capital Warsaw was razed to the ground in 1944 after a failed uprising in which 200,000 civilians died.

After the war, the victorious Allies awarded Poland a large swathe of German land as compensation for Polish territory annexed by the Soviet Union in the east. With allied consent, millions of Germans were expelled by the Poles.

GOVERNMENT AGAINST REPARATIONS

Poland's leftist government has ruled out asking Germany for war reparations after Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declared his government did not support any war-time claims against Poland.

The threat of claims surfaced this year as Poland joined the European Union, but legal experts hired by both governments concluded this month that such claims were baseless.

But this has failed to calm some Polish right-wing parties demanding Germany assume full responsibility for any claims -- a demand Berlin rejects.

Some, including the Kaczynski brothers, say they may seek reparations if they win power in next year's elections.

Poland's ruling left accuses the right-wing of whipping up anti-German sentiment that could hurt Polish standing in the EU.

"If this issue comes back (in the new government), it will be an embarrassment on a European scale," Prime Minister Marek Belka said. "I subscribe to the view that the issue of reparations is closed once and for all."

The Kaczynskis dismiss such arguments, saying current tensions in relations with Germany could bring a genuine reconciliation, based on mutual respect.

"Our relations with Germany are important and I want good relations with Germany," Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Reuters.

"But Germany must realise that Poland will not bend ... It should not take advantage of our weakness."