German anger at Nazi pipeline slur

[Ferran]

German anger at Nazi pipeline slur

Tuesday, May 2, 2006; Posted: 7:01 a.m. EDT (11:01 GMT)

Poland's Defence Minister Radek Sikorski.

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- German politicians expressed outrage on Tuesday after a Polish minister compared a German-Russian pipeline deal to a pact made between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union before World War II.

Germany and Russia plan to pipe gas under the Baltic Sea and Poland is unhappy the project is being built without its involvement.

Poland's Defense Minister Radek Sikorski said on Sunday the plan was akin to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 when Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin carved up Poland between them.

German politicians called on Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz to bring his defense minister into line and for Sikorski to withdraw his comments.

"Such absurd comparisons are harmful for German-Polish relations," Ruprecht Polenz, the Christian Democrat head of the parliamentary foreign policy committee, was quoted as saying by Bild newspaper.

Social Democrat (SPD) foreign policy expert Hans-Ulrich Klose said: "Mr Sikorski should reconsider his comments and then withdraw them as quickly as possible."

The pipeline, backed by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, is being built by Russian gas monopoly Gazprom and two German firms.

Sikorski told reporters in Brussels on Sunday that Germany's attitude undermined the European Union's common foreign and security policy.

"Poland has a particular sensitivity to corridors and deals above our head. That was the Locarno tradition, that was the Molotov-Ribbentrop tradition. That was the 20th century. We don't want any repetition of that," he said.

The pact was signed in Moscow in 1939 by the German and Russian foreign ministers of the time and named after them.



Source: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe...eut/index.html