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'Naked attack' on Merkel
26/06/2007 14:17 - (SA)
Berlin - Germany and Poland had barely resolved a nasty dispute over EU voting rights when the next irritant to relations emerged: a Polish magazine cover that features a bare-breasted Chancellor Angela Merkel suckling Poland's governing Kaczynski twins.
Germany's biggest-selling daily, Bild, led its Tuesday edition with news of the "naked attack" by Polish weekly Wprost. "Poles mock German chancellor," blared its front-page headline.
On an inside page, Bild reproduced the offending photo montage, which Wprost published on Monday under the headline "Stepmother of Europe".
In its article, Wprost celebrated Poland's insistence on revisiting planned changes to the European Union voting system before last week's summit.
Poland's governing duo, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and President Lech Kaczynski, emerged with a several-year extension of the existing vote system, giving Poland almost as many votes as Germany.
In arguing for a change, the premier had raised Poland's World War II suffering at the hands of Nazi Germany.
Wprost accused Germany of harbouring "lingering postcolonial reflexes toward Warsaw" and argued that "Germany is still unable to treat Poland like a partner".
The German government declined to comment. Wprost has raised eyebrows in Berlin before; in 2003, it depicted a lawmaker who heads a group representing Germans expelled from eastern Europe after World War II, dressed as a Nazi officer astride then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
"The Poles should stop outdoing each other in tastelessness," conservative lawmaker Eduard Lintner told Bild. "At some point, that will have an impact on the mood in Germany."
Berlin's BZ tabloid also gave Wprost's montage prominent coverage. Its verdict: "Frustrated Poles insult Merkel."
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