W. German Supports Poland on Borders

WEST German Social Democratic leader Oskar Lafontaine gave his unqualified support for the present Polish borders during a visit in Warsaw last week. Mr. Lafontaine's statement was welcomed here, where the German-Polish border question continues to be a top item in the country's foreign policy debate and where Chancellor Helmut Kohl's vacillation on this issue has been criticized.

Lafontaine's visit to Poland was his first to Eastern Europe as the Social Democratic candidate in the December elections. He said it was ``a conscious decision'' to come here in order to obtain cooperation for reconciliation between West Germany and Poland.

In his meetings with the entire Polish leadership, he said at a press conference Friday that he supported Poland's wish to draft a treaty to be negotiated with the governments of the two Germanys and also Poland's wish to participate in the talks between West and East Germany and the four allied powers of World War II.

Lafontaine's broad support for Poland's positions comes at a time of clearly strained West German-Polish relations. Even so, President Wojciech Jaruzelski wrote in the weekly Polityka last week that the Poles and the Germans are not condemned to eternal distrust.

``It is hard to visualize future European unity without a genuine and lasting reconciliation of 80 million Germans and 40 million Poles living in the heart of the continent,'' the president wrote.