Merkel Wants Good Relations with Poland -- and Gas Pipeline

Adding to Germany's intentions to improve strained relations with its bordering neighbor, Berlin will not be halting plans to build a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Russia.

''We are going to try our best,'' Merkel told a German radio station, NDR Info, on Thursday. She said she was confident of an improvement, despite what she called ''fluctuations in mood.''

The problems had to be discussed frankly, she added.

Merkel said Germany was committed to the North European Gas Pipeline, which Poland sees as a move to bypass it. She said other nations were not excluded from the project.

After talks in Helsinki last Sunday, she is to meet with Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski on Oct. 30.

Weimar Triangle summit rescheduled

Meanwhile, the heads of state of France, Germany and Poland will meet in early December for a Weimar Triangle summit, a spokesman for the Polish president announced in Warsaw.

The December summit bringing together French President Jacques Chirac, Merkel and Polish President Lech Kaczynski will be held in place of the Weimar Triangle meeting cancelled in July due to that Kaczynski's illness.

Media in Poland has speculated whether Kaczynski had deliberately cancelled the Weimar engagement in reaction to a satirical article in a German newspaper lampooning both him and his identical twin brother, Prime Minister Kaczynski.

Tumultuous German-Polish relations

Relations between Poland and neighboring Germany have taken a turn for the worse in recent months.

A Berlin exhibition detailing the fate of Germans who fled or were expelled from Eastern Europe to Germany after the World War II defeat of Nazi Germany has drawn sharp criticism in Poland.

Poles are concerned the exhibition may be misused to distort history and diminish Nazi Germany's responsibility for the suffering of civilians during WWII.