Poland is 'land of freedom'

Germany's newly elected president, Joachim Gauck, called Poland "Europe's land of freedom" during his first trip abroad.

Gauck, who deliberately chose the Eastern neighbor for his first foreign outing instead of France, met his Polish counterpart Bronislaw Komorowski on Tuesday before moving on to talks with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Gauck said he had enjoyed talking to Komorowski about a host of current affairs topics, which he emphasized was by no means to be taken for granted given the "great brutality" that Poland had experienced from Germany in the past.

The fight against dictatorships in the past as well as the fight for democracy today united the two countries, Gauck said.

Gauck, who arrived with his partner Julia Schadt in Warsaw on Monday evening, chose Poland for his first trip to stress the importance of German-Polish relations.

"Our peaceful revolution in the former East Germany was only possible because our Polish neighbors showed that it was possible to fight for freedom," Gauck, himself a former anti-Communist activist in East Germany, told Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza ahead of the visit.

"It is this admirable story of freedom and democracy that I associate with Poland," said the president.

Komorowski said Gauck's visit emphasized that relations between the two countries ran much deeper than mere diplomatic ties and that Poland and Germany had a duty to foster European integration.

He gave Gauck an election poster of the Solidarity union, which played a major part in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

ng/mz (dpa, dapd)