BERLIN, Sept 27 (AFP) - Poland and Germany announced here on Monday the creation of a team of lawyers to challenge any compensation claim from ethnic Germans seeking to reclaim property lost at the end of World War II.
After a meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder which focused on the sensitive issue, Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka said both countries were determined to ensure that no claim for reparations ever succeeded.
"This team of lawyers will work to ensure that individual claims which could be lodged in the courts by Germans are considered null and void," Belka said.
"They belong to the past and the issue is closed."
The lawyers will be from both Poland and Germany.
At a joint press conference, Schroeder said it was "essential that the absence of legal foundation for such claims should be clearly established".
An association of ethnic Germans expelled from Poland at the end of WWII in 1945 says it wants to pursue claims through the courts in an effort to recoup property in the regions of Silesia and Pomerania that was seized by Russian forces.
Rudi Pawelka, the director of the association, called the Prussian Claims Society, told AFP on Monday that the group was examining the possibility of lodging claims either in German or European courts such as the European Court of Justice.
As some of the expelled Germans now live in the United States, it did not rule out the possibility of taking the claims to US courts.
The privately run organisation, which represents less than 1,000 expelled Germans, had said earlier this month it was hoping to launch an initial raft of 15 claims.
The calls for compensation from the Germans have created huge resentment in Poland.
Germany in turn reacted angrily to a resolution from the Polish parliament adopted on September 10 calling for reparations for "the enormous material and spiritual destruction caused by German aggression, occupation and genocide".
The emotionally-charged resolution was put forward by right-wing parties despite warnings from Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski that it could harm relations between the countries just as Poland had become a member of the European Union.
Schroeder and Belka insisted on Monday that relations between Germany and its neighbour to the east were in good health.
"Germany and Poland are closely tied together in the interests of advancing European integration," Schroeder said.
Belka said the issue of compensation related to World War II must not be allowed to spoil the ties between his nation and its most important trading partner.
"It would be terrible if emotions related to the claims for reparations suddenly came to the surface which could spoil everything," Belka said.
Most Poles believe the war-time losses of the ancestral property pale into significance compared to the deaths of more than six million Poles, including the majority of the country's pre-war population of 3.1 million Jews, after Adolf Hitler's army invaded in 1939.
Another 2.5 million were deported to labour camps in Germany, while Warsaw and other cities were nearly destroyed as the Nazis sought to eradicate Polish culture.