Hands Across the Oder-Neisse

...THE BONN-WARSAW MEETINGS Hands Across the Od^jvJNJgJggg BY DONALD R. SHANOR Warsaw When State Secretary Georg Ferdinand Duck-witz, Bonn's envoy to Warsaw, arrived earlier this month at the Polish Foreign Ministry for his second round of official talks, he found the limousine of East German Ambassador Rudolf Ross-meisel parked m front of the building The fact that Duckwitz is returning for substantive negotiations later in March, amid cautious signs of optimism from both sides, shows that the East German courtesy call had no immediate effect on the first West German-Polish meetings since the War Still, the Democratic Republic's insistence on letting its views be known, without regard for tact or appearances, indicates how great a hindrance it may be Indeed, it is no coincidence that in mid-February, shortly after the completion of the opening stage of Duckwitz' mission, East Germany invited West German Chancellor Willy Brandt to meet with Wuly Stoph, his counterpart in East Berlin The pre-conditions the Communists set—from diplomatic recognition to the surrender of West Berlin—are designed to msure the meeting's failure, so that the East Germans will be able to tell their allies, especially Poland, how little it pays to negotiate Bonn's attempt to improve its relations with Warsaw after 25 years is perilous enough without such interference If only public statements are considered, the very first pomt on their agenda—the Oder-Neisse line—is one on which there are irreconcilable differences In the Polish view, the permanence of this border is beyond discussion, the negotiations cannot lead to any improvement m relations unless the Federal Republic accepts it Successive Bonn governments have insisted that such an agreement would have to await an all-German peace treaty And there was a considerable concentration of voting power in the 10 million refugees from the lost territories to support this stand As the refugees became integrated into Western life, however, their pressure lost force Today, Brandt's Left-liberal coalition can risk ignoring them Nevertheless, Bonn continues to seek a solution that would stop short of formal acceptance Brandt has a Bundestag majority of only a dozen seats, and future state elections may weaken the will of his coalition partners, the Free Democrats, to be identified with giving up ancient German lands Accordingly, Bonn is understood only to be willing to "respect" the Oder-Neisse line and the right of the Polish settlers to live in the lost territories At the same time, it wul pledge never to Donald R Shanor reports on East Em ope far the Chicago Daily News attempt to change the border without Poland's consent The mutual renunciation of force, part of Bonn's policy in all ot Eastern Europe, would cement the agreement Polish officials say this formulation will not work Bonn counters that outright recognition of the border would endanger the remaining chances for German reunification, which depend to some extent on leaving postwar territorial questions for the peace conference To this the Poles reply that West Germany already has made boundary adjustments with Belgium and the Netherlands without waiting for a grand postwar settlement Thus, while Bonn has come a long way from the inflexibility of the Adenauer era, the Poles appear not to have moved at all As in many other areas of political life though, appearances m Warsaw can be deceptive For years, Polish intransigence matched that of the Germans', and every overture from church or trade union groups in the Federal Republic was rejected as an insidious form of revenge-seekmg or militarism The one exception was a short period after 1956, when Party chief Wladyslaw Gomulka, looking for alliances to balance against Moscow, would have exchanged ambassadors, with few concessions expected But the late Chancellor Adenauer refused to negotiate, and the chance was lost Before and since, anti-German propaganda has been a central theme of Polish life No visit to a school, city hall or factory can be made without a reminder of the German occupation in exhibits, pictures and memorials The 6 million Poles who died in the War cannot be forgotten, of course, but the memory also proved valuable to' the Gomulka regime It was at once a justification of close ties with the Soviet Union—the only reliable guarantor of the territory taken from the Germans—and of the police state annoyances that every Pole has to put up with The government could point to the occupation as a far worse state of affairs, and explain away current restrictions and abuses on the grounds that they were necessary m the light of the threat from Germany Last May, in an abrupt change of policy, Gomulka made an election speech offering to meet and deal with the West German leadership A series of articles in the Party press began to speak of the Other Germany, the progressive and positive forces struggling against the militarists Officials went out of their way to stress the new line to visiting correspondents, explaining that the Bonn coalition, with Brandt as Foreign Minister and the Social Democratic party (sdp) sharing power for the first time since the War, was a sign of increasing realism Since October, with Brandt serving as Chancellor and the sdp in control, they insist the West German attitudes have become more realistic than ever The argument did not completely hold water then, nor does it now It is undoubtedly pleasanter to deal with men like Brandt, an anti-Nazi emigre, and Duckwitz, who used his wartime foreign office post in Denmark to save thousands of Jews But Gomulka's original offer, after all, was made to a government headed by a former Nazi, Kurt Georg Kie-smger Much more than the makeup of the new West Germany government, therefore, two other circumstances are the real keys to the Polish shift First was the sudden warmmg of the Soviet Union to Bonn in the wmter of 1969, when Soviet Ambassador Semyon Tsarapkm began making regular calls on Brandt Out of these meetings grew the current Moscow negotiations on renunciation of force, and the $500-milhon deal to exchange Russian natural gas for German-made steel pipe The Poles saw the specter of a new Rapallo, they began to fear that their wholly negative German policy threatened them with isolation The second factor is the cooling of Warsaw's relations with the East Berlin regime, which recognized the Oder-Neisse line two decades ago but, as far as the Poles are concerned, has done little for them lately...

...The Democratic Republic has refused to jom in a closer integration of comecon—the Communists' answer to the Western European Common Market (eec)—because it would mean mcreased sharing of its highly developed technology with Poland And this, in turn, would mean giving up its status as the eec's secret seventh member, a position it enjoys through interzonal trade agreements with Bonn "We were always taught that the German nationalists were all in the West," a Polish economist recently commented "Now it seems they are everywhere " The Gomulka regime, apparently adopting the same thinking, has now turned to Bonn for the trade and technology it could not get from East Berlin As East German Ambassador Rossmeisel's visit indicates, however, many possibilities for interference remain—particularly the insistence that Bonn recognize East Berlin before any other Warsaw Pact member agrees to exchange ambassadors with it This position, once a part of every Polish statement on relations with West Germany, has not been rescinded formally, but neither is it mentioned very often anymore The Poles, in fact, are groping for a way to get around the problem, and in private conversations officials have sketched out their formula West Germany, they concede, must indeed recognize East Germany if it is to have completely normal ties with Poland But normalization, after all, is a process that could take years, and establishing diplomatic relations between Bonn and Warsaw would merely be one step in that direction...