On many tokamaks the reconstruction of the magnetic field structure in the plasma is supported by polarimetric measurements. Recent proposed and realized methods are based on a far-infrared laser beam with a rotating polarization ellipse. The same instrument usually performs as an interferometer measuring the line integrated plasma density. It has been shown that the rotating polarization ellipse disturbs the interferometric measurements. A method based on the principle of a rotating polarization in which the interferometric measurement is unaffected is proposed. Bench test results are presented which show the feasibility of this method. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.