• Wednesday, 03 July 2024

Polish foreign minister signs note regarding reparations demands

Polish foreign minister signs note regarding reparations demands
Warsaw, 3 October 2022 (dpa/MIA) - Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau has signed a diplomatic note on his country's demands for reparations from Germany.
The note will be handed to the German Foreign Office in Berlin, Rau said in Warsaw on Monday. The note "expresses the Polish foreign minister's conviction that the parties should take immediate steps towards a permanent, comprehensive and final legal and material settlement of the consequences of German aggression and occupation from 1939 to 1945," Rau said on Monday. It comes ahead of a visit to Warsaw of German Foreign Minster Annalena Baerbock. The Berlin official is set to take part in German Unity Day celebrations on Monday at the German embassy in Warsaw, where she will also give a speech. On Tuesday, Baerbock is due to meet Rau for talks at the Polish Foreign Ministry. Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has been intensifying anti-German rhetoric with a view to the coming parliamentary elections in about a year. Early last month, a parliamentary commission in Warsaw presented an expert report that put Poland's World War II losses at more than €1.3 trillion ($1.27 trillion). At the same time, PiS party leader Jarosław Kaczyński renewed his demand for compensation payments from Berlin. The topic is also likely to play a role in the meeting between Baerbock and Rau. The German government opposes the demand for reparations, pointing to the Two-plus-Four Treaty of 1990 on the foreign policy consequences of German unification, which Berlin believes settled the issue.