Warsaw - (AFP) - Poland has prevented Israeli school groups from hiring armed guards to accompany them during visits to the country, including to former Nazi concentration camps.

"We are ready to receive Israeli flights in Poland if they are not accompanied by armed security guards," the Polish News Agency (PAB) quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina as saying on Tuesday.

Jasina's comments came after Israeli Ambassador Yaakov Levin announced last week that visits to Israeli schools had been banned "due to decisions taken by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs".

It concerns visits organized by the Israeli Ministry of Education for secondary school pupils, which have been suspended since June.

Jasina said, in an interview with a local radio station in Lublin, eastern Poland, that the visits of Israeli students to France and Germany were not accompanied by armed guards, adding that this could leave the impression that they faced a greater danger in Poland than in those countries.

Relations between Poland and Israel have witnessed several disagreements in the past few years, the latest of which was against the background of a new Polish law that was considered to block the claims of Jewish families whose property was confiscated after World War II.