German President Horst Köhler has provoked the ire of Poland's Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski for addressing a gathering of 1,000 Germans expelled from Poland after World War II. In his speech Köhler urged Germans to be sensitive to Polish concerns about plans by the League of German Expellees to create a "Center for Expulsions" in Berlin, an idea condemned in Warsaw as a bid to portray Germans as victims.

Kaczynski, referring to Köhler's appearance before the League, said: "That's one of these disturbing events taking place in Germany these days."

The League's current exhibition in Berlin called "Forced Paths" about various major expulsions of ethnic groups including the case of Germans being thrown out of what is now Poland and the Czech Republic after World War Two has been an irritant to relations between Germany and Poland, which suffered under a brutal occupation by the Nazis during World War II.

Many Poles fear the exhibit will present a one-sided account of wartime suffering and create an impression that the Germans were mostly victims -- rather than perpetrators -- of the war. Shortly after its opening, Kaczynski called it "very bad, very disturbing and very sad." During the war, Poland lost some 6 million citizens -- half of them Jews. About 2 million Poles were also displaced when the Third Reich collapsed and borders were moved westward.

The League, headed by German conservative member of parliament Erika Steinbach, represents and remembers the estimated 12.5 million Germans expelled from their homes in Poland and other Eastern European countries shortly after the war. German newspaper commentators on Monday say Kaczynski's criticism of Köhler is unfounded.

Conservative Die Welt writes: "The Polish prime minister isn't looking for dialogue. Like his brother, the president, he has the characteristics of the demagogue: the courage for extremes, the cold wildness that turns a phrase into a manifestation and the hardness of the assertion that ostracises all disagreement. Both politicians and their Law and Justice party are exploiting the old fear of Germany to render Poland's society amenable to their march into the 'Fourth Republic'," writes the paper. "They're not interested in the German truth. Instead, Kaczynski constantly used the picture of the revenge-hungry German to secure his anti-Western policy which is controversial in his own country. The majority of Poles are positive towards Europe. They regard relations with Germans as good. Seventy-two percent want close cooperation with their western neighbors. The conclusion from this can rapidly be turned into policy: be friendly to the Kaczynskis and hope their rule will end soon. That will happen at some point, the Poles will see to it themselves."

Liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung writes that Köhler's tone was so mild when he appealed to the conscience of the League of Expellees on "Homeland Day" that many listeners will scarcely have noticed it. "But the quiet admonition was necessary because these associations are experiencing new respectability."

"All attempts by the organized expellees to boycott the EU membership of Poland or the Czech Republic or to attach conditions to it have failed. Politically, the expellee organizations lost the game a long time ago. But socially, they continue to be courted, especially by the conservatives. After all, it's true -- in the post-war society, the expellees were left alone with their suffering. They were integrated, but not listened to. There's no reason why their fate shouldn't be seen in a differentiated way and with more understanding. But there are many reasons for not letting the expellee organizations themselves take over the historical and political treatment of this memory -- such as the planned Center Against Expulsions. They still have too many unmistakeable reactionary traits, however modern their rejuvenated leadership may prevent themselves as, and they still have too many problems separating cause -- the aggressions of Hitler Germany -- and effect -- the expulsion.

"Many people have long since re-established contacts in their lost former homeland. Europe is growing together but the functionaries of the expellees aren't part of that process."

Left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes: "Köhler put the origins of the expulsions right at the start of his speech: Germany's occupation of Poland and its reign of terror with millions of victims. 'There is no serious force in Germany that wants to rewrite history,' the president stressed." It was good that he said those words to expellees, said the newspaper. "That is why there is not the slightest reason for the Polish government to criticize his appearance there."

Conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung describes Kaczynski's comments as "hysterical" and defends Köhler, saying he had been urging expellees to take Polish concerns seriously.

-- David Crossland, 2:00 p.m. CET

The Trouble with Iran

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's two-day visit to Iran yielded no progress in the nuclear dispute. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad snubbed the UN chief over international demands to stop enriching uranium and ignored his warnings not to incite hatred by questioning the Holocaust. Iran even provoked Annan by announcing on the second day of his visit that it would host a conference to examine what it called exaggerations about the Holocaust.

Annan's visit came after Iran ignored the UN Security Council's Thursday deadline for Tehran to halt uranium enrichment, in what may lead to UN sanctions  over concerns that Iran may be trying to develop atomic weapons.

Annan described his talks with Iranian officials as "good and positive." He said Ahmadinejad had reaffirmed Iran was prepared to negotiate but that he did not accept suspension of nuclear enrichment before negotiations, a condition set by the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.

Business daily Financial Times Deutschland says Annan should have been tougher. "A UN Secretary-General has virtually no instruments of power. That makes it all the more important for him to make sure that the framework of international law in which he works is at least respected in principle by everyone.

"The international community will of course always argue about the interpretation of resolutions. But countries such as Iran that dismiss such resolutions as irrelevant demonstratively place themselves outside the shared law.

"In the nuclear dispute this is especially problematic because Iran keeps referring to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That gives Iran the right to use nuclear energy for civilian purposes, which nobody is questioning. But it's a matter of dispute how military usage -- which is banned under the treaty -- can be ruled out. Iran's position of referring to law or dismissing it as it sees fit is absurd and unacceptable. Annan should have said so in Tehran. The 'good and positive' talks the Secretary-General reported are too little in this respect," writes FT Deutschland.