PRAGUE - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder tried on Tuesday to ease new tensions between the Sudeten German minority and the Czech Republic which remain irreconciled 60 years after the end of World War II.
During a brief visit to Prague he called on Czechs and Germans to look to the future rather than constantly reopening the wounds of the past.
"Our future is the common future of Europe," he said.
Schroeder rejected as "unacceptable" messages which were hurled against the Czechs during a weekend conference of Sudeten Germans by Bavarian state premier and leading figure of the opposition Christian Social Union party Edmund Stoiber.
"In May 1945 one of the most significant ethnic cleansing of the 20th century history began," Stoiber told the annual assembly of Sudeten Germans.
He again called on the Czech Republic to abolish the 1945 decrees issued by then president Edvard Benes ordering the expulsion of around 2.5 million people from the border regions of Czechoslovakia and the confiscation of their property on the grounds that they had supported Hitler and his pre-war annexation of the Czech part of the country.
But Schroeder swept aside the request, which he has consistently refused to relay during his seven years in power.
"I don't downplay in any way the personal catastrophes which happened. But the causes were the occupation and the war, and these came from Germany," said Schroeder during a joint press conference with his Czech counterpart Jiri Paroubek.
Stoiber's comments provoked indignation among many Czech politicians who rejected any suggestion of repentance for the suffering of the Sudeten Germans.
Lawmakers from Schroeder's Social Democratic party adopted a declaration comparing Stoiber's comments to the those of the leaders of Hitler's Third Reich.
"We have had the habit of hearing these attacks against Czechoslovakia and Edvard Benes from leaders of Nazi Germany," said a text published Tuesday during the German chancellor's visit.
For their part, the Sudeten Germans denounced as a provocation the inauguration Monday of a statue of Benes outside the Czech foreign ministry in Prague.
Benes was Czechoslovakia's first foreign minister after the country's founding in 1918.
The post-war transfer of the significant German minority from Czechoslovakia's border areas, the Sudetenland, continues to stir up emotions in both the Czech Republic and Germany, although not at a government level.
After his brief visit to Prague Schroeder travelled to the former Nazi transit camp of Terezin, formerly known as Theresienstadt, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Prague to pay tribute to the victims.
Accompanied by Paroubek, the German chancellor toured the site of the former camp and laid a wreath at the cemetery.
Around 35,000 people died at Theresienstadt, mainly due to poor hygiene standards. More than 140,00 Jews passed through the camp; of those 87,000 were deported mainly to the death camps of Auschwitz.
05/17/2005 16:15 GMT