Polish minister makes Nazi allusion to Merkel

WARSAW (Reuters) - An ultranationalist Polish minister invoked an expression from the Nazi era on Saturday to describe German Chancellor Angela Merkel's negotiating tactics over an EU treaty.

Deputy Prime Minister Roman Giertych said Merkel's threat to push ahead even if Poland vetoed the treaty had been tantamount to telling Polish leaders "Haende hoch!" (Hands up!) -- a German phrase associated by Poles with the commands of Nazi occupiers.

"This is a situation in which one says to someone in the political sense 'Haende Hoch!'," Giertych was quoted as saying by Poland's PAP news agency.

Other European leaders had been shocked by Poland's earlier references to its Nazi occupation during World War Two to bolster its case for a demand to changes in the EU voting system set out in the new treaty.

After the Poles rejected a proposed compromise over the treaty late on Friday, Merkel threatened to move ahead with or without their blessing. Poland eventually settled for an agreement to delay the start of the new voting system until 2017.

Poland fears it will lose influence to bigger countries, especially Germany, under the new system, but had the support of almost nobody else for its own proposal.

Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said before the summit that Poland deserved more voting power in the European Union because its population would be much larger now than 38 million if not for the Nazi occupation.

Giertych's League of Polish Families is one of three parties in Kaczynski's conservative coalition.