Poland at war of words with German

Polish breast montage

Poland's demand to boost its EU voting rights caused tension

German politicians have condemned a computer generated photo of Poland's leaders sucking the German Chancellor Angela Merkel's bare breasts.

The image appears on the cover of the Polish weekly Wprost, and is titled "Stepmother of Europe".

A Polish council overseeing ethics in the media said the montage overstepped "the limits of good taste".

Tension between the neighbouring countries has been building following last week's European Union summit.

The mocked up image shows Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, nuzzling at Ms Merkel's chest.

Germany's Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called the image "tasteless".

Social Democrat Markus Meckel, head of the German-Polish parliamentary group, said: "It is quite unbelievable. Poland has lost so many friends over the past weeks and months. It should really think hard in the future about how it hopes to win them back."

'Negative atmosphere'

Erika Steinbach, a politician from Ms Merkel's party who represents the interests of Germans forced to flee from present-day Poland during World War II, said Poland's leaders were to blame for tension between the two countries.

"The Kaczynski brothers must bear the responsibility for this negative atmosphere," she told the Hannover-based Neuen Presse newspaper.

Ahead of the Brussels summit Poland demanded a boost to its EU voting rights at Germany's expense and threatened to refuse to sign up to a new EU treaty because it would give bigger countries such as Germany too much decision-making power.

Poland eventually persuaded Ms Merkel, whose country oversaw the summit as the current EU president, to insert a clause into the treaty postponing the introduction of the voting system until 2014.

In arguing for an extension of the vote system the Polish Prime Minister raised Poland's World War II suffering under Nazi Germany.

And a day after Berlin said it wanted to heal the tensions exposed during the summit, Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Polish public radio "something very negative" is happening in Germany.

He went on to compare modern-day Germany to the Nazi era of the 1930s but said Europeans did not dare speak out.

"Like in an era which has already passed, the large majority of Europeans didn't have the courage to talk about it, it is the same today," Mr Kaczynski said.