Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made an unprecedented appearance by a German head of government at the commemorations of the event in which Warsaw was reduced to rubble and 200,000 Poles killed.
Looking tense at a news conference with his Polish counterpart, he moved to lift a cloud which has lingered recently over relations with Poland, declaring opposition to demands for reparations by ethnic Germans driven out of Poland at the end of World War II.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Britain's Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott represented Poland's wartime western allies, who were accused of doing too little to help the insurgency.
Powell, pointing to Poland's May 1 membership of the European Union and 1999 membership of Nato, promised Warsaw - a key US ally in Iraq - would not be left on its own again. "Poland will never be alone again as it was 60 years ago," he told a news conference.
"The United States will always be with Poland."
The 63-day uprising, launched on the stroke of 5:00 pm (1500 GMT) on August 1, 1944 by the non-communist resistance group, the Polish Home Army (AK), was directed militarily against the German Nazis, who occupied Warsaw at the time. Ahead of the ceremony, tension had also been in the air between Warsaw and wartime ally Britain, which Belka said Saturday should recognise its failure to give more aid to the insurgents.
Many Poles believe that London was partly responsible for the failure of the uprising, for not transporting Free Polish forces in Britain back home to take part in the fighting.