Polish PM heads to Germany with relations at a low

BERLIN, Oct 30 (Reuters) Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski visits Germany today to try to improve the neighbours' strained ties, but he stoked tensions on the eve of the trip by reviving a debate over post-war German refugees.

Relations between the neighbours have sunk under Kaczynski and his twin brother Lech, Poland's president, who made Germany-bashing a staple of their election campaign last year when they pledged to adopt a more ''patriotic foreign policy''.

Kaczynski stirred up simmering tension before the trip by dismissing the claims of some Germans to compensation for property their families lost when they were displaced, or evicted, from modern western Poland at the end of World War Two.

''It is high time to bring an end to this nonsense,'' Kaczynski told top selling German daily Bild in an interview published today, when he is due to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

Merkel struck a more conciliatory tone ahead of the meeting.

On Saturday, she acknowledged the suffering Germany inflicted on Poland during World War Two, and stressed the role the neighbours can play in the European Union, whose rotating presidency Berlin assumes for six months from January 1.

Diplomats say Kaczynski's visit follows US pressure on Warsaw to mend fences with Germany. The US administration fears Warsaw's uneasy ties with Berlin will ultimately hurt Washington's ability to influence European policy.

''We are both members of the EU. Therefore I hope our relationship develops in a positive direction,'' Kaczynski told Bild. ''If there are sometimes problems -- well, they arise in the best of families, don't they?'' Ties have also been strained by plans for a Russian-German gas pipeline which bypasses Poland, and which a Polish minister earlier this year compared to the pre-World War Two pact between Hitler and Stalin that led to the carve-up of Poland.

In Warsaw, Kaczynski told a briefing ahead of the meeting with Merkel: ''I believe Poland's energy security will be the most important problem raised during that discussion, although the question cannot be reduced to a single pipeline alone.'' Reuters DH VP0505