Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Poland's president and first lady lie in state

The first couple's only child, daughter Marta, led mourners

The bodies of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and First Lady Maria Kaczynska are now lying in state in the capital, Warsaw.

Maria Kaczynska's body arrived earlier from Moscow amid emotional scenes after Saturday's plane crash in Russia that killed the couple and 94 others.

Parliament has held a special session to honour those killed in the disaster.

The first couple are to be buried on Sunday, a day after a memorial service for the victims in the Polish capital.

A guard of honour stood to attention in the rain at Warsaw airport as the body of the first lady arrived on a military plane. President Kaczynski's remains were repatriated on Sunday.

Weather warning

After a brief religious ceremony, mourners took turns to kneel at Maria Kaczynska's casket and pay their respects as it stood on the tarmac.

They included the late first couple's only child, daughter Marta, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, identical twin of the late president.

Maria Kaczynska's coffin, draped with Poland's white-and-red flag, was then driven through the streets of Warsaw to the presidential palace.

Thousands of Poles lined the 10km (6 mile) route to the city centre, covering the hearse with flowers, then took turns to file past the coffins.

The first couple will be laid to rest on Sunday at Wawel Castle in the southern city of Krakow, according to Poland's PAP news agency.

A special session of both chambers of parliament was held on Tuesday to pay tribute to those who died in the disaster.

An investigation is ongoing into the crash; the plane clipped tree-tops as it tried to land in fog at a former air base north of Smolensk city on Saturday morning.

Russian officials say the pilots of the Soviet-built Tu-154 airliner had ignored weather warnings and repeatedly tried to land.

Polish prosecutors have stressed there is no evidence the crew were pressured by those onboard to ignore the advice.

The president and his party of senior Polish military and political officials had been due to attend a memorial for the Polish victims of a World War II massacre by Soviet secret police at Katyn, near Smolensk.

Relatives are in the Russian capital helping forensic scientists identify the bodies. Family members are being supported by Polish and Russian psychologists.

Forty-five of the victims have been identified, the Russian health minister said on Tuesday, reports AFP news agency.

Some of the bodies are so badly disfigured that DNA evidence will be needed.

Poll date

President Kaczynski's body was identified on Saturday in Smolensk by brother Jaroslaw, who is a former prime minister.

Poland is in the middle of seven days of mourning over the tragedy.

Russia observed a day of mourning on Monday.


Pictures of Polish president and wife

In pictures: First couple mourned

President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have devoted much time to dealing with the aftermath of the crash.

The Russian president is expected to be among leaders attending Sunday's state funeral for Mr Kaczynski, who was an outspoken nationalist known for his distrust of Russia.

Moscow's handling of the tragedy has been widely appreciated in Poland, though others suggest the thaw in relations may not last, the BBC's Duncan Kennedy reports from Warsaw.

Meanwhile, Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski said he would announce on Wednesday the date of the country's presidential election, expected in May or June, reports Reuters news agency.

Mr Komorowski, who is parliamentary speaker, had been expected to run against the late president.

Opinion polls before the crash indicated Mr Komorowski, the official candidate of Prime Minister Donald Tusk's governing Civic Platform Party, would have comfortably beat Lech Kaczynski, who had become increasingly unpopular.

There is now speculation that Jaroslaw Kaczynski may step in to represent the Law and Justice party. Analysts say he may benefit from an outpouring of public sympathy following his brother's death.

Source:BBC News

Monday, April 12, 2010

In dark times Poland needs the sunlight of truth

n 1943 Poland’s wartime leader accused Moscow of ordering the Katyn massacre, the systematic murder of 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals. A few months later he was dead, the victim of an air crash. Was it murder? Almost certainly not, but Poland’s painful past, combined with official secrecy, created precisely the muggy and mysterious conditions in which conspiracy theory thrives.

In 2010 another Polish leader, President Lech Kaczynski, heads to Katyn to commemorate the appalling massacre that took place there. Within hours he too is dead, along with his wife and 94 other members of Poland’s elite, the victims of another air crash. Was this coincidence? Almost certainly, but a similar climate of suspicion ensures that the conspiracies are already sprouting, and spreading.

The thread connecting these events is secrecy, for it is concealment that turns a tragedy into a festering historical sore. Britain still has not released all the files on the death in 1943 of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish Government-in-exile. For decades Moscow declined to admit what had happened at Katyn, and Vladimir Putin still refuses to apologise.

In the confusion and grief following the Smolensk air crash on Saturday, the whispers, rumours and accusations have begun to circulate. The Polish president’s plane, it is noted darkly, was Russian-made, and recently serviced in Russia. The Russian Government heartily disliked President Kaczynski, who had criticised Russia’s “new imperialism”. Moscow declined to invite him to a ceremony at Katyn last Wednesday — so Kaczynski decided to hold a second memorial service, and was killed en route.

Initial reports have ruled out mechanical failure, so was the pilot pressurised to make the landing by his august passengers? Polish conspiracists are already blaming the Russian secret service, while others suggest that Russian hardliners may have sought to undermine Mr Putin by sabotaging the plane.

Poland has a deeply emotional, almost mystical relationship with the story of tragedy, rebellion, courage and repression that is Polish history. The present is permanently refracted through the past. “The place is cursed,” declared Aleksander Kwasniewski, the former President, after the latest tragedy associated with Katyn.

Lech Walesa’s remark was even more telling: “This is the second Katyn tragedy; the first time they tried to cut our head off, and now again the elite of our country has perished.” Implicit is the assumption that “they”, unnamed enemies, must also lie behind Poland’s latest national calamity.

The only way to ensure against wild conspiracy theories is to conduct the crash investigation in the disinfecting sunlight; to eschew the secrecy that is Moscow’s natural instinct; and to ensure that the historical verdict on this episode is provided, or at least believed, by Poles. To do, in short, everything that Britain failed to do when investigating the death of another Polish leader, 67 years ago.

On July 4, 1943, General Sikorski, the Polish commander-in-chief of land under Nazi occupation, took off from Gibraltar in a converted RAF Liberator bomber, bound for England. A few minutes later the plane plummeted into the harbour, killing 16 passengers on board including Sikorski’s daughter, Zofia. The Czech pilot was the sole survivor.

A British court of inquiry conducted a swift and secret investigation, which ruled out sabotage but failed to establish the cause of the crash. The pilot said his controls had jammed.

The conspiracy theories erupted almost immediately, and have continued ever since. One held that the Nazis had orchestrated the crash, determined to remove a popular Polish figurehead. Even greater suspicion fell on Stalin, who had most to gain from eliminating the troublesome general. Three months earlier Sikorski had called for a Red Cross investigation into the Katyn massacres, prompting a furious Stalin to break off relations with the Polish Government-in-exile.

Alternative theories claimed that the assassination was the work of a Polish faction, or the British, keen to remove an impediment to good relations with its Soviet ally. Soldiers, a 1968 play by the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, even suggested that Winston Churchill had played a role in the supposed assassination plot.

Many British documents relating to the crash remain classified, and for nearly seven decades the conspiracists have been allowed virtually free rein. Kim Philby, then head of MI6 counterintelligence for the Iberian Peninsula, was said to have had a hand in organising Sikorski’s death on behalf of his Moscow spymasters. Sikorski’s daughter was allegedly spotted in a Soviet gulag many years later. Sikorski himself was variously said to have been poisoned, strangled, suffocated or shot before being loaded on to the doomed plane.

Last year Polish forensic scientists exhumed the general’s corpse from a crypt in Cracow and concluded that he had died in the air crash after all. But, as Polish historians pointed out at the time, until or unless all the British and Soviet archives are released, the fate of Poland’s wartime leader will continue to be a source of friction and fantasy.

Sikorski’s plane probably crashed because someone accidentally placed luggage on the steering mechanism. An equally simple explanation — most likely pilot error — may lie behind the accident that deprived Poland of so much of its leadership last weekend.

If so, it is essential that the Polish people themselves see the truth being revealed. So far, Russia has made the right noises, promising an open investigation and agreeing to leave the aircraft at the scene.

But so long as Mr Putin heads the commission investigating the crash, Poles will wonder about the truth of its findings. Russia should invite Polish experts to take part in, and witness, every aspect of the investigation. Mr Putin has gone some way towards building a historical consensus about Katyn, even making a personal appearance at the service last week. This is another opportunity for him to demonstrate that history, as it unfolds, can bring old enemies together, as well as force them apart.

Like the Katyn massacre and the death of General Sikorski, the Smolensk crash will come to represent another tragic milestone in Poland’s history. The horror of Katyn was hidden for half a century behind Soviet lies; the fate of Sikorski was obscured, for far too long, by British secrecy. This time Poland itself should have the right to decide what really happened.

Source:Times online

Mystery still surrounds cause of Polish air tragedy

POLISH INVESTIGATORS say they have uncovered no evidence that Polish president Lech Kaczynski demanded that his pilot make a fatal crash landing in fog last Saturday.

Russian authorities confirmed yesterday that they had identified the body of Polish first lady Maria Kaczynska, who died along with her husband and 94 others in the air crash near the western Russian town of Smolensk.

Her remains will be flown home today, a day after those of Mr Kaczynski. The deceased president will lie in state from today at the presidential palace in Warsaw ahead of a state funeral on Saturday.

Mystery persists about why the aircraft clipped trees and crashed in flames after Russian tests yesterday revealed no mechanical defects.

Polish authorities say the aircraft had been fitted recently with new electronic equipment and the engine had been overhauled. But diplomats familiar with the aircraft have questioned why Warsaw still used a Soviet-built Tupolev 154 “badly in need of replacement”.

“It’s hard to understand how we are involved in costly missions in Afghanistan and Iraq but are unable for years to equip our [leaders] with proper planes,” said Prof Roman Kuzniar, an international affairs analyst at Warsaw University.

That has all turned the spotlight back on Mr Kaczynski. Asked whether the pilot was pressurised to land by the president, Poland’s chief prosecutor, Andrzej Seremet, said yesterday: “At the current level of the investigation we have no such information.”

After flight recorders revealed nothing unusual, Russian investigators said yesterday they had moved on to the voice recorders.

Mindful of the continuing week of mourning, Polish media have not dared even raise the possibility that Mr Kaczynski had a role in the crash. But the Russian media have recalled how, in 2008, Mr Kaczynski demanded that a pilot land his aircraft in Tblisi in the middle of the Georgian war; the pilot refused and diverted.

A Russian flight expert suggested in the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily that the crash was caused by “VIP passenger syndrome”. But this was dismissed by a colleague of Arkadiusz Protasiuk, the crash pilot.

“He was a tough man who wouldn’t let emotions prevail over common sense,” said Tomasz Pietrzak, another government pilot, on Polish radio. “He would certainly not risk passengers’ lives.”

The crash has also prompted reflection in political circles about whether the incident might have been the indirect consequence of years of competition between the president and Polish prime minister Donal Tusk.

Last Wednesday, Mr Tusk flew to Katyn for a memorial service with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Feeling snubbed at not being invited, Mr Kaczynski, from a competing party, organised a competing event on Saturday to remember the 22,000 Polish soldiers massacred at Katyn in 1940.

“As a consequence of the crash, this unfortunate situation may finally be at an end,” said Andrzej Maciejewski, political analyst of the Sobieski Institute think tank.

Mr Kaczynski’s office published his final, undelivered speech yesterday, in which he paid tribute to the Katyn soldiers and the families who kept their memory alive, and condemned the Soviet cover-up as “the founding lie of the [communist] People’s Republic of Poland”. But the president, known for his anti-Russian tirades, saved his final words to thank Moscow for its assistance ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre.

The undelivered words carry additional poignancy now: “Let’s allow the Katyn wound to finally heal,” he planned to say. “We are already on the path; we should follow it to bring our nations closer and not stop or retreat.”

Mr Maciejewski of the Sobieski Institute said: “In future we will be able to distinguish between pre-April 10th Polish-Russian relations and post-April 10th.”

Source: Irishtimes

'VIP passenger syndrome' may have contributed to Polish plane crash

Russian aviation experts claimed that "VIP passenger syndrome" could have played a part in causing of the tragedy, as it was disclosed that Lech Kaczynski had previously tried to sack a pilot who refused to land a plane for him in dangerous circumstances.

Black box recordings have confirmed that the pilot, Arkadiusz Protasiuk, an experience airman serving with the Polish air force, had ignored warnings to divert to another airport because of heavy fog.
However, it has been suggested that Mr Kaczynski did not want to miss a ceremony for the 22,000 Poles massacred by Soviet forces in the Second World War and may have urged the air crew to continue trying to land the plane.

Viktor Timoshkin, an aviation expert, said: "It was quite obviously 'VIP passenger syndrome'. Controllers suggested that the aircraft's crew divert the plane to an alternate route. I am sure that the commander of the crew reported this to the president. But in response, for whatever reasons, he had a clear order to land."

In August 2008, Mr Kaczynski "shouted furiously" at a pilot who had disobeyed his order to land his plane in then war-torn Georgia for safety reasons. He later tried to have Captain Grzegorz Pietuczak removed from his post with the Polish air force for insubordination, however, Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister intervened. Captain Pietuczak was later awarded a medal for carrying out his duties conscientiously for his refusal to land having judged the risks.

A Russian aviation expert said yesterday: "If he tried to land three times and fell on the fourth then he probably had the 2008 incident in mind and that was why he felt he had to land at any price. In effect, he did not take the decision but the main passenger on board did - even if the main passenger did not utter a word to the pilot."

Andrzej Seremet, Poland's chief prosecutor, said that there was no information from the investigation so far to suggest that Mr Kaczynski had put undue pressure on the pilot.

A senior air traffic controller at the Russian airport where the Polish plane was trying to land stirred controversy by suggesting that the Polish pilots' poor knowledge of the Russian language was to blame.

"They were supposed to give us a report about their altitude on the approach to landing," he said. "They did not give it." When asked why, he said: "Because they have a bad command of the Russian language. There were Russian speakers among them but for them numbers were quite complex."

It came as tensions between Russia and Poland over the air crash were escalated when a Polish MP claimed the Kremlin was partly to blame for the tragedy.

The two countries have set aside centuries of mutual distrust to present a united and recrimination-free front but yesterday Artur Gorski, a member of the Law and Justice party founded by Mr Kaczynski, said that Russia may have tried to deliberately prevent Mr Kaczynski's plane from landing and thereby indirectly caused his death.

Mr Gorski said: "One version of events says that the plane approached the airport four times, because every time the Russians refused it permission to land; they wanted to send the plane with the president to an airport in Moscow or Minsk,

"They came up with some dubious reasons: that there was fog over the airport, that the navigation system didn't work as it was under repair, and that the airport had a short landing strip."

Mr Gorski suggested that the real reason Moscow did not want President Kaczynski to land was because he was due to attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of an infamous Soviet massacre of Polish officers.

The Russians, he claimed, did not want Mr Kaczynski to upstage a similar event hosted by Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, a few days earlier.

The Kremlin may also have feared that the Polish president, a noted hawk when it came to Russia, may have planned to criticise Moscow for not issuing a proper apology for the 1940 massacre, he added.

Mr Putin, who has taken charge of the investigation into the air crash, which is being carried out by both Russian and Polish teams, yesterday promised an "objective and thorough" investigation.

Bronislaw Komorowski, Poland's acting head of state, has announced an immediate review of regulations, or the lack of them, governing just which political and military leaders can fly together. The air crash was carrying nine senior military leaders, as well as the governor of Poland's central bank.

Source: Telegraph

Poland and Russia mourn President Kaczynski

The body of Polish President Lech Kaczynski is to lie in state in the capital Warsaw as the nation mourns the victims of the Smolensk air crash.

He and 95 others, including many top defence officials and public figures, died when their jet crashed en route to a war memorial service in Russia.

Russia is also marking a day of mourning, as relatives arrive in Moscow to try to identify the bodies of the victims.

Duncan Kennedy reports.


Source:BBC

Poland Mourns Death of Leaders, But Life Goes On

Poland is preparing for state funerals for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, and is awaiting the repatriation of the bodies of many of its political and military elite - all killed in a plane crash in western Russia on Saturday.  Many Poles are slowly coming to grips with this tragedy.

More vigils and tributes - hundreds of people crowded into the Church of Saint Anna in central Warsaw for a special mass for those killed in the crash.

Many mourners young people, mostly students who earlier had marched silently through the city carrying Polish flags and pictures of the President and his wife.

This young woman, Katherine, says she came in tribute to the country's leaders and because the rector of her university was among those killed.

Nearly 100 people were aboard the flight from Warsaw to the western Russian city of Smolensk.  The plane crashed as it tried to land amid heavy fog, killing all onboard - President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria and a delegation that included Poland's top military leaders as well as many political and cultural figures.

They were on their way to attend a memorial service to commemorate the murder of some 22,000 Polish military officers and civilians who were massacred by the Soviet Union's secret police during World War II.

Jacek Kucharczyk is President of the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw.  He says Saturday's plane crash has shocked the nation, but that it has not sparked a political crisis.

"I think that the reaction to this disaster was very quiet and peaceful, and people wanted to mourn the dead above their political views and how they evaluated the President and his party," said Jacek Kucharczyk. "There didn't seem to be any sense that the country is in a fragile situation that institutions aren't working."

As the Polish Constitution mandates, the speaker of parliament has taken on the role of interim president and new elections are to be scheduled within the next 2.5 months.

Meanwhile life is slowly returning to normal.  Shops are open; people are at work.  But many Poles are also asking questions such as why so many of the country's political leaders were traveling on one plane and why, if as Russian authorities say, the pilot ignored warnings against trying to land in poor weather conditions.

But for now many Poles are seeking comfort in candlelight vigils and in church services.

Source: voanews.com/

Katyn anniversary tragedy appears to be uniting Russia and Poland

Katyn has symbolised bitter division between Poland and Russia for 70 years. Now the new tragedy associated with its name appears to have united them to an extent unprecedented since the Second World War massacre.

The outpouring of Russian sympathy for grieving Poles, at official and street levels, may have done more in 48 hours to erode mutual suspicion than any amount of diplomacy since Poland emerged from Moscow’s shadow after the collapse of the Soviet Eastern Bloc.

Russians traditionally celebrate April 12 as Cosmonauts’ Day, in honour of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. But yesterday was a day of mourning, with flags at half mast in Moscow. Hundreds of people, many close to tears, laid flowers and lit candles outside the Polish Embassy and at the site in Smolensk where the presidential jet crashed on Saturday, killing all 96 on board.

The government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta called the catastrophe “our common sorrow” and the opposition Novaya Gazeta declared in Polish: “We are with you.” President Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, have been visibly moved by the enormity of the latest loss of Polish life on Russian soil.

Poland and other states long used to regarding Russia as an aggressive bear have suddenly witnessed a more humane face of their former bête noire. After placing roses before a portrait of President Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, at the Polish Embassy, Mr Medvedev wrote in the book of condolences that the “dreadful tragedy . . . has shocked the Russian people”. He added: “The loss left an unfillable void. We are grieving together with you.”

Mr Putin’s embrace of Donald Tusk, his Polish counterpart, at the crash site has become a symbol of the new entente. He told the Russian Cabinet that the country was “grieving together with the Poles”.

Mr Putin has promised a full investigation by Russian and Polish experts working together in a clear attempt to dispel even a shadow of suspicion over the causes of the crash. Any unanswered questions would provide fertile grounds for conspiracy theories that each side knows could wreck hopes for lasting rapprochement.

History is not easily overcome and everyday politics has a habit of corroding goodwill once the initial shock of a tragedy has worn off. It remains too early to say whether Russia and Poland are entering a new era of improved understanding or merely expressing common emotions at an accident whose impact will fade with time.

For now, shared grief over the “second Katyn tragedy” has created more space for Russians to consider the first. State television broadcast Andrzej Wajda’s film about the 1940 massacre of 22,000 officers for the second time in ten days on Sunday, presenting viewers with a Polish history lesson that the Soviet Union had lied about for half a century. The state news agency Ria-Novosti also published the speech that Mr Kaczynski, a vehement critic of the Kremlin, was to have given in Katyn to mark the 70th anniversary. It contained a poignant appeal for reconciliation days after Mr Putin and Mr Tusk held the first joint memorial service at the site of the slaughter.

“Katyn became a painful wound of Polish history, which poisoned relations between Poles and Russians for decades. Let’s make the Katyn wound finally heal and cicatrise,” Mr Kaczynski had planned to say. “We are on the way to do it. We, Poles, appreciate what Russians have done in the past years. We should follow the path which brings our nations closer.”

Source:timesonline.co.uk/

Poland mourns air-crash victims

Madam, – I am an Irishman currently in Poland. I arrived last Thursday to visit some of the many friends I had made while living here for 18 months from January 2008 until July last year. When the news of the plane crash, which claimed the lives of so many of Poland’s leading politicians, came through on the radio, I was on a bus heading to Nowy Sacz, a small city in the south of the country. From my time spent in this amazing country, I can see and feel the immense sense of loss that the Polish people are feeling.

On Saturday, I could see the shock in the faces of people in the city. On Sunday, it felt as if the country was numbed.

The disbelief that this could happen was evident everywhere. That this disaster should happen on the day that the country was to commemorate those Poles massacred in Katyn during the second World War, makes it even more poignant. The name Katyn continues to haunt Poland.

Having lived and worked with Polish people in Ireland and in Poland, I know that while this is a setback the Polish people have a strong heart, and will bounce back strongly from this event. I would like to offer my deepest condolences to those Poles here and abroad. – Yours, etc,

GREG MAITLAND,

St Ives Gardens, Belfast.

Madam, – While the Polish state rightly mourns the death of President Lech Kaczynski with due deference to the protocols and traditions associated with the death of a head of state, I’m a little surprised that some politicians have been so gushing in their comments.

He was a hard-nosed extreme right wing conservative, with a questionable human rights record and was an outspoken homophobe. While being hosted as a guest of this nation in 2007, he said giving homosexuals equal rights would threaten the existence of the human race. He also banned gay rights protests in Poland. Give him whatever respect his office deserves, but don’t make him out to be something he wasn’t. – Yours, etc,

DAVID WILKINS,

Putland Villas,

Vevay Road,

Bray,

Co Wicklow.

Source:

Poland calls for solidarity

The ill-fated journey that wiped out Poland's governing elite on Saturday was prompted by an angry feud between President Lech Kaczynski and his Prime Minister over the country's tense relationship with Russia, it emerged yesterday.

As the body of the 60-year-old President, who died along with 95 senior religious, political and military figures, lay in state and Poland struggled to come to terms with its worst national tragedy since the Second World War, details of the political acrimony that preceded the disaster surfaced in Warsaw.

A constantly changing crowd now gathers in front of the city's white stucco presidential palace where the pavements have disappeared under an ocean of flowers, flickering candles in glass holders and photographs of the deceased President and his wife, Maria.

Many queued for hours to sign a book of condolences. Jana Sokolowska, a 45-year-old office worker with three children, said she had taken the day off work to join the long line snaking into the palace building. "I felt I had to do something," she said. "This is one of the saddest times for Poland and I wanted to show my solidarity and sympathy with all the relatives of those killed in the crash," she added.

A joint funeral will be held on Saturday at the earliest. "It is clear that the main commemoration of the victims should take place in a single event. All flew out together, so it is right that they should all be remembered together," said Jacek Sasin, a close aide of the late President.

Details emerged in Warsaw of the background to the President's fatal flight to attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers by Soviet forces.

Sources said Mr Kaczynski and many in his entourage on board the doomed Tupolev were dissatisfied with attempts to effect a reconciliation over the 1940 massacre at a special ceremony in Katyn on Wednesday called by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin, a former KGB agent, had invited his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, to attend a special ceremony of remembrance.

But the soft-glove handling of that event by Mr Tusk tried the patience of the Polish President, who had not been invited. He resolved to fly to Katyn himself three days later in the company of his political allies in defiance of Mr Putin. "They wanted to hold their own ceremony in Katyn to give the anniversary the importance they thought it deserved but felt had been denied by Russia," a source close to the President's office said yesterday.

President Kaczynski and members of his right-wing Law and Justice party felt they had been snubbed by Russia. They were also irritated that Mr Tusk, leader of the liberal Civic Platform party, had been allowed to take credit for Wednesday's ceremony. But even more galling was the fact that Mr Putin had failed specifically to apologise or address the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn and had simply referred to "victims of Stalinist terror" during the ceremony and that Mr Tusk had apparently failed to take his Russian counterpart to task over it.

"Moscow is sabotaging attempts to give a proper historical account," said Andrejz Przewoznik, the general secretary of Poland's State Council for National Memorials. "There was no breakthrough on Katyn," remarked Aleksandr Szczyglo, president of the Polish National Security Council. Both men were on the plane and were killed in the crash.

Mr Kaczynski had a long history of rivalry with Mr Tusk. The two even argued about who was entitled to use Poland's official Tupolev 154 plane, which crashed on Saturday. With a presidential election looming, Mr Kaczynski clearly felt that he could improve on Mr Tusk's efforts at remembering in Katyn.

There was also speculation in Poland yesterday that President Kaczynski was so determined never to set foot in Moscow before extracting an apology from Mr Putin that he may have personally intervened and ordered the 36-year-old pilot of the Tupolev not to divert to the Russian capital but to land in Smolensk despite repeated warnings by air traffic controllers at the tiny airport that the fog made conditions too dangerous to attempt a touch down

Polish media reports recalled that in 2008 following Russia's invasion of Georgia, Mr Kaczynski had attempted to fly to Tibilisi to show his support for a country under siege. During the flight he took the unprecedented step of entering the cockpit and ordering the pilot to land despite adverse conditions. On that occasion the pilot refused, the aircraft diverted to another airport and Mr Kaczynski entered Georgia by car.

On Saturday, because the President's entourage was so big, the Polish media flew separately, landing an hour earlier before the fog set in. As news of the crash came in, the camera crews were left to film the shocked faces of those already at the ceremony who had been waiting for the President.

Source:independent.co.uk/

Poland Ready to Resume Zloty Interventions Under New Governor

April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Poland’s next central bank governor must stick to a policy of curbing gains in the European Union’s best performing currency this year and raising interest rates to contain inflation, Stone Harbor and TCW Group Inc. said.
“We have to see who gets nominated, but at this period we’re neutral, we’re not trading at all on our Polish position,” said Pablo Cisilino, who manages a $12.5 billion emerging-markets, fixed-income portfolio for Stone Harbor Investment Partners in New York. “We expect policy continuity.”
Bank governor Slawomir Skrzypek died in an April 10 plane crash, which also killed the president, and his successor has yet to be named. The tragedy occurred a day after the central bank started selling zloty in a bid to contain this year’s 6 percent appreciation against the euro, the bank’s first intervention in 12 years. The currency’s gains are hurting exporters in the biggest of the EU’s eastern members and the only EU economy to have avoided a contraction during the credit crisis.
The zloty is rising “too far and too fast” for the bank to ignore the issue and “there’s no reason to believe they won’t come back into the market again next week or the week after,” said Blaise Antin, managing director at TCW Group Inc. in Los Angeles, who helps oversee $115 billion, including $4 billion in emerging market assets, in an interview yesterday.
‘Out of the Way’
Before Skrzypek’s death, the central bank had signaled it was deciding when to start raising interest rates from a record low 3.5 percent. The bank has cut the benchmark in six steps from 6 percent over the past year and a half.
“Uncertainty should be out of the way by June,” after a permanent governor is appointed, “and we stick for now with our call of three rate hikes from July, but with risks to the downside given prospects of further intervention,” said Peter Attard Montalto, an emerging markets economist at Nomura International Plc, in a note.
The bank will raise the benchmark interest rate to 4 percent by year-end, according to the median forecast of 11 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
Inflation slowed to 2.6 percent in March from 2.9 percent the previous month. The bank estimates price growth may slow to 1.4 percent by the third quarter, below its 2.5 percent target, though accelerating economic growth may push up consumer prices by year- end. Gross domestic product will rise 3 percent in 2010 after growing 1.7 percent last year, the government estimates.
Attard Montalto expects the country to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a prelude to adopting the euro, in 2011.
Appointment
The central bank governor is appointed by the president and must be approved by a simple majority of lawmakers. As acting president, Bronislaw Komorowski, who is also the official presidential candidate of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling Civic Platform party, is entitled to name a candidate without waiting for presidential elections, said Piotr Winczorek, a professor of constitutional law at Warsaw University.
The zloty lost as much as 0.7 percent against the euro today before recovering to trade at 3.8607 at 5:13 p.m. in Warsaw.
Investors have pared bets on rate increases, with forward-rate agreements used to speculate on borrowing costs nine months from now trading 33 basis points above the current three-month Warsaw interbank offered rate. That compares with 71 basis points on March 5, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
‘More Active’
“The next few days will show how lasting the impact of the central bank action is,” said Piotr Bielski, a Warsaw-based economist at Bank Zachodni WBK, a unit of Allied Irish Banks Plc. “Investors will now have to be aware that Poland’s exchange rate policy is becoming more active, which should help to ease appreciation pressure on the zloty.”
Poland’s central bank appointed Skrzypek’s deputy Piotr Wiesiolek as acting governor after the crash, in Smolensk, western Russia, killed all 96 passengers, including President Lech Kaczynski, on route to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet forces at the Katyn forest.
‘Realistic’
Skrzypek, who like Kaczynski was a euro-skeptic, was appointed by the president in 2007 for a six-year term.
Poland abandoned its 2012 euro adoption target last July after it became clear it would miss the bloc’s fiscal targets. Pro-euro Tusk now says 2015 is a “realistic” date.
Preston Keat, London-based research director of Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting company, said tension between Skrzypek and the government over Poland’s euro aspirations and central-bank accounting had made investors jumpy and prone to “overreact.”
That attitude may now change, even if policy remains broadly similar, said Michael Ganske, head of emerging-markets research at Commerzbank AG in London.
“There will be stability, especially because the authorities understand that market participants are nervous and in this environment you need continuity,” Ganske said. “There is no way there’s going to a be a major political, structural change after this accident. It’s about keeping stable governance, stable institutions like the central bank and economic policy. It’s more a psychological phenomenon than something that forces major changes in policy.”
--With assistance from Dorota Bartyzel in Warsaw and Agnes Lovasz in London. Editors: Tasneem Brogger, Chris Kirkham.

Source: businessweek.com/

Poland's economic legacy is tribute to leaders who died on Saturda

aroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, prays by the coffin of his brother at Warsaw's airport Photo: AFP/GETTY

Stalin's massacre in 1940 wounded a nation which was doomed to suffer for decades. Perhaps the greatest tribute that can be paid to Saturday's air crash victims is that they leave a strong, independent country and a sound economy, able to withstand this shocking accident.

President Lech Kaczynski and Slawomir Skrzypek, the governor of the central bank, were among the many political, military, intellectual and religious leaders killed. Bronislaw Komorowski, the parliamentary speaker, has taken over as interim president and will call an election by mid-year. Komorowski was expected to be a presidential candidate in the elections previously scheduled for October. The polls were predicting that he would defeat Kaczynski

At the central bank, Piotr Wiesiolek, Skrzypek's deputy, has taken temporary charge. Komorowski says a new permanent governor will be appointed quickly.

The legacy of those who died on Saturday is a resilient Poland. The zloty's fall of close to one-third when the global crisis was at its worst a little over a year ago helped cushion the Polish economy. Growth of 1.7pc in 2009 was remarkable given that European Union countries contracted by an average of 4.1pc and no other EU economy grew at all. Investors have taken note. The central bank acted last week to try to stem the zloty's steady appreciation over recent months.

Luck has played a part in Poland's success. Car scrappage schemes in Germany and elsewhere favoured Polish manufacturers. But the conservatism of Kaczynski and other Polish leaders also deserves credit. Poland avoided eastern Europe's worst lending binges. Kaczynski frustrated some of his opponents by being in no rush to head towards the euro party.

Economic prospects remain good. The fiscal deficit may approach 7pc of GDP this year and needs to be reduced. But growth is expected to be about 3pc this year and the government aims to raise about $10 billion from sales of state assets, including in the largest insurance company, PZU.

Poland is traumatised by the accident and by the cruel irony that those killed were en route for Katyn. Russian grief over the accident has been welcomed in Poland. A little balm has been poured on the appalling wound of 70 years ago. That Poland's fate is so much better now reflects in part the life work of those who died on Saturday.

Source: telegraph.co.uk/

Jews honor Holocaust victims, Polish officials

OSWIECIM, Poland — Thousands of young Jews along with Holocaust survivors marched Monday at Auschwitz to remember those who perished in the Nazi death camp, and to honor Poland's late president.

The 10,000 or so people from around the world attending the annual March of the Living walked the stretch of about 3 kilometers (2 miles) between the red-brick Auschwitz compound and the death camp's wooden barracks section of Birkenau.

At least 1.1 million people — mostly Jews, Poles and Roma — died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz or from starvation, disease and forced labor at the camp that German Nazis built in occupied Poland during World War II.

Many in Monday's annual march also wore black arm bands or carried black ribbons in memory of Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, who were killed in a plane crash Saturday along with 94 others en route to WWII-era observances in western Russia.

Israeli Ambassador Zvi Rav-Ner read out a message in Hebrew, English and Polish saying this year's marchers were also "paying homage" to Kaczynski and the other plane crash victims.

"Lech Kaczynski and his wife were friends of the state of Israel and of the Jewish nation. Today we will march in solidarity with the entire Polish nation," Rav-Ner said while standing by the infamous gate with a sign reading "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Makes You Free."

The inscription was meant to mislead inmates into thinking they were arriving at Auschwitz to work, not die. The metal sign now in place is a replica of the original, which is undergoing renovation after it was stolen in December and recovered two days later.

By tradition, the march started with the blowing of the shofar, or ram's horn, at the gate.

The Auschwitz camp was liberated in January 1945 by Soviet troops.

Source:AFP

Sharansky honors Kaczynski during March of the Livin

Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said Monday during the March of Living in Poland's Birkenau death camp that "each one of those present here has a duty not to forget."


"The Jewish people are not alone in remembering the Holocaust," Sharansky said. "Several millions around the world are determined to remember the Holocaust and turn the world into a more just place. That's exactly what Lech Kaczynski, president of Poland, tried to do and we are greatly indebted to him." Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash on Saturday.

Polish air crash puts spotlight on pilots' duties


NEW YORK — Even up against tough weather and tight schedules, pilots are supposed to have the last word on when, where and how to land their aircraft. But aviation veterans, trying to make sense of the fog-shrouded crash that killed Poland's president, say pressures on pilots to keep VIP passengers on schedule can sometimes override safety considerations.

"There are certain CEOs and bosses — you are going to get them to where they want to go, and there aren't any ifs, ands or buts," said David Weitz, a pilot who has flown many corporate and union leaders.

"It plays on the pilot's mind," said Weitz, of Leesburg, Va. "He may go to some heroics that maybe he wouldn't normally do, if there's some pressure from the back of the plane."

No official conclusions have been drawn about the weekend crash in Russia that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others, including dozens of Polish political, military and religious leaders.

However, the pilot of the government plane had been warned of dense fog at the destination airport in Smolensk and was advised by traffic controllers to land elsewhere, even though that would have delayed observances of a World War II massacre.

The circumstances sparked speculation in Poland that the pilot had been pressured by his superiors to land at Smolensk rather than diverting.

Under standard aviation procedures, a landing has to be cleared by an air traffic controller. If a pilot wants to land despite controllers' advice, he can declare an emergency and land at his own risk.

"In this country, it's totally the pilot's responsibility," said FAA spokesman Les Dorr. "The only thing the controllers do is relay the weather conditions and the conditions of the runway and so forth. It's the responsibility of the captain of the aircraft to decide whether it's safe to land."

But airlines and aircraft owners sometimes pressure pilots to fly or to land against their better judgment, said safety consultant Jack Casey, a former airline pilot.

Usually, that kind of pressure — known in the industry as "pilot pushing" — is subtle, rather than overt, Casey said. Pilots may feel their job is at risk if they rebuff an employer, he said.

The issue of pilot pushing was raised last year at a House committee hearing on airline safety, which included a discussion of the FAA's effort to rewrite rules on how many hours airlines can require pilots to work in a day and how much rest they must be given between flights.

John Prater, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, testified that some regional airlines pressure pilots to fly even when they have not had enough sleep.

In general, though, it would be unusual for an airline or an aircraft owner in the U.S. or most other Western countries to attempt to override a pilot's judgment, Casey said.

"In corporate aviation, you might find a case where the boss has spent $45 million for his Gulfstream and, because of weather or whatever, he's being told he can't go where he wants to go" and resorts to pressure, Casey said.

"It's a pilot's job to separate themselves from other things in the environment such as a desire get home or a desire to get someplace on time," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "You are supposed to be weighing things based on the risk."

However, William Yavorsky, who retired in 2008 after a 40-year career as a private pilot flying political and business leaders, recalled facing intense pressure from one of his former corporate employers — including flying on a six-day, multi-stop flight around the world with working hours far exceeding the safe norms for pilots.

"The captain has the ultimate responsibility and authority, and everybody else is in an advisory capacity, including air traffic control," said Yavorsky, of Merritt Island, Fla.

"But in reality, we were scared to death of the chairman of board," he said. "When the boss has to go some place, he can make your life miserable."

Yavorsky, whose passengers over the years included a former president of the Republic of the Congo and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, said the top VIPs often were deferential to the pilots, while their executive assistants would be the ones exerting pressure to stay on schedule.

"These are the guys trying to make things work for the boss at your expense," Yavorsky said.

One potential problem, said David Weitz, is pressure by VIP passengers to land at the airport closest to their final destination, even if safety conditions would be better at a more distant airport.

"Maybe it isn't the best choice in terms of runway length, or maybe there's no mechanic there," he said.

While pressure on pilots is often subtle, investigators have pointed to it as a contributing factor in several air crashes over the years.

In its investigation of the March 2001 crash of a chartered jet at the Aspen, Colo., airport, the National Transportation Safety Board found the pilot had been under intense pressure. The flight was pushing up against the destination airport's closing time, and the customer who paid for the charter arrived late for departure from Los Angeles.

When the pilot explained he might be forced to divert to another airport, the customer was "irate" and had his assistant call the charter company to say the pilot should "keep his comments to himself."

Then, minutes before landing at Aspen — at a time so late that the curfew would make a second attempt impossible — one of the passengers stepped forward and joined the crew, buckling himself into the cockpit's jump seat.

"The presence of this passenger in the cockpit, especially if it were the charter customer, most likely further heightened the pressure on the flight crew to land" at Aspen, the NTSB found. After that crash, charter company Avjet Corp. changed its procedures to ban customers from the cockpit jump seat.

In the August 2001 crash that killed singer Aaliyah on the Caribbean island of Abaco, investigators found that the plane was packed with luggage and passengers exceeding the craft's weight limit. Airport employees said that baggage handlers and the pilot protested before takeoff, but the passengers demanded they be allowed to bring all the items.

External pressure on pilot was also cited as one of many factors that may have contributed to the April 1996 crash in Croatia that killed Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and 34 others aboard an Air Force plane. Investigators found that the crew had improperly planned the route.

"The error added 15 minutes to the planned flight time and may have caused the crew to rush the approach," the Department of Defense said in a briefing on its investigation of the crash.

"It's a reality of the job almost every day," said Mark Duell, vice president of operations of Flight Aware, whose Web site tracks status of flights in process. "The guys in the back want to get there, and the guys in the front do have the ultimate call. But when the guy in the back is screaming about firing, the pilots sometimes do give in."

In difficult conditions, air traffic controllers provide crucial information and instructions for landing, but once they give clearance, they defer to a pilot's judgment, said Ron Taylor, president of the Professional Air Controllers Organization, which represents about 300 tower workers at various airports.

"The pressure's going to be on the pilot. The controller's just advising, saying this is what we've got, this is the current weather," said Taylor, formerly a controller at Palm Beach International Airport and Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center. "The controller....can't stop him."

At U.S. airports, it is not uncommon for a pilot encountering bad weather to miss on a first approach to the runway and try again, Taylor said. But if a second attempt also fails, the rule of thumb calls for diverting the flight to a nearby airport.

In such an instance, Taylor said, there's little tension between traffic control and the crew, with most pilots maintaining a calm professionalism that betrays little hint of any pressures they may be under.

"There could be people in the back or whatever, saying 'I want to get on the ground.' That's all part of the gig. The captain knows his own limitations. He should know the terrain. He should know the approach."

But Taylor said he was astounded by reports that the crash in Smolensk came on the fifth attempt to land as perhaps a sign of extraordinary pressure on the cockpit.

The pilot "makes the final call. If it's a good call and things go right or if its a bad call and something goes wrong, he doesn't have much margin of error."

Associated Press writers Joan Lowy in Washington and Slobodan Lekic in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

Source:AFP

His Holiness the Dalai Lama Offers Condolences to the People of Poland

Zurich: His Holiness the Dalai Lama offered his condolences to the people of Poland for the loss of President Kaczynski, and all the others who died in a tragic air crash in a letter to the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk sent on 10th April, 2010.

His Holiness "recalled having been privileged to meet the President when he visited Poland and expressed his admiration for the late President's dedication to the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights".

President Lech Kaczynski, 60, and other senior figures including Poland's army chief, central bank governor, MPs and military heads were among the 97 people on board the plane that crashed in thick fog in Smolensk, Russia. The mishap occurred when the president and his entourage were travelling to Russia to take part in the official commemoration ceremony of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre.

Source: tibetcustom.com/

European Union officially mourns with Poland

Not only Polish flags but European flags at EU institutional headquarters in Brussels were lowered to half mast as a European Union day of mourning was declared.
President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek, Polish, expressed condolences on behalf of the assembly’s members.
A Polish analyst at the Centre for European Policy Studies talked about possible impacts from Poland’s loss — including consideration from Russia.
Piotr Kaczynski said: “Poland is committed to Europe. The government of Donald Tusk is running the country and its European policy. Now bigger changes can be expected, but by no means at this stage are they guaranteed to take place vis a vis Russia. For the first time over this weekend, seeing how Russians have behaved and reacted to the tragedy, some people in Poland started to talk about the friends from the east and this is rare. You could not hear it over the past 25 years.”
Brussels has a significant Polish immigrant community. A dominican church where they celebrate mass each week in their own language in the wake of Saturday’s accident has seen a steady flow of mourners.

Source:euronews.net/

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Poland in shock at news of president's death

The President of Poland, President Lech Kaczynski and his wife have been killed, along with 132 others in a plane crash in the Smolensk region of Russia.

The people of Poland are in shock today as news comes through of the tragedy.

The plane on which the president was travelling was on its final approach to the airport when it went down.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart," said Sergei Anufriev, governor of the Smolensik region.

The Polish foreign ministry have confirmed that the president is dead.

"The plane caught fire after the crash. Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane," said a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman in Warsaw.

It has been confirmed that the head of the Polish army, as well as several senior officials and their families were onboard the plane.

Born into the hard times of post-war Poland, President Kaczynski was a contraversial yet popular leader, who was determined to pull Poland away from its Post-Cold War legacy.

Poland in shock as president feared dead in crash

Lech Kaczynski has been president of Poland since December 2005 Photo: AP

President Lech Kaczynski was travelling with his wife from Warsaw to Smolensk airport, 220 miles southwest of Moscow, when his plane crashed in thick fog.

Poland was left stunned by the news that their president, his wife, and a whole swath of the Polish elite had been killed.

A television newsreader fought back tears as she relayed the news that the head of the Polish army and the head of the presidential administration were also on board the plane, along with the president's wife and families of other senior officials.

The plane was also carrying the governor of Poland's central bank, Slawomir Skrzypek.

Sergei Antufiev, the regional governor of the Smolensk, said that everyone on board had been killed.

"It clipped the tops of the trees, crashed down and broke into pieces," Mr Antufiev, told Russia-24 television news network by telephone. "There were no survivors." Polish state news agency PAP also said there were no survivors.

William Hague, shadow foreign minister, wrote on Twitter: "Very sad this morning about the death of Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash - a brave man who was interned by the Communists for his beliefs."

Mr Kaczynski, 60, had been president since December 2005. He was married with one daughter.

Mr Kaczynski had been flying to Katyn, near Smolensk, to commemorate Russian and Polish victims of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Thousands of Polish prisoners of war and intellectuals were murdered at Katyn by Soviet forces in spring 1940 in an enduring symbol for Poles of their suffering under Soviet rule.

Families of those killed at Katyn were also on board the plane, the Polish government official at the airport said.

In the case of a president's death, the speaker of the lower chamber of parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski, takes over as head of state, Mr Komorowski's assistant Jerzy Smolinski told Reuters.

Conditions around the airport were described as foggy when the Tupolev Tu-154 came down a mile from the airport.

Source: telegraph.co.uk/

Polish president Lech Kaczynski killed in plane crash


The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, was among 132 people killed when their plane crashed in Smolensk, west Russia. Photograph: Tomasz Gzell/EPA

The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and his wife were among 132 people killed when their plane crashed in thick fog on its approach to a regional airport in Russia early this morning.

The governor of the west Russian town of Smolensk confirmed there were no survivors from the Tupulov Tu-154 plane, which came down at 11am (7am GMT) about a mile (1.5km) from Smolensk airport.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart. Nobody has survived the disaster," Smolensk governor Segei Anufriyev told the Russia 24 news channel.

The Polish government will hold an emergency meeting later today. Officials said the head of the Polish army, the governor of the central bank and the head of the presidential administration were also on board the plane, as well as Kaczynski, his wife and the families of other senior officials.

"The plane caught fire after the crash," said a Polish foreign ministry spokesman in Warsaw. Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane."

The pilot was told Smolensk airport was closed because of thick fog, according to the news agency Interfax. He was offered a choice of landing instead in either Moscow or Minsk, the capital of Belarus. But he decided to continue with the original flight plan and land at Smolensk.

The pilot made three unsuccessful attempts to land before the crash. On the fourth try and plane fell apart, Interfax said, citing officials at Smolensk's interior ministry.

Russia's foreign ministry confirmed the cause of the air catastrophe was bad weather. "According to provisional information the crash happened because the plane failed to land at the military airport near Smolensk in conditions of severe fog,' one official said.

Kaczynski was visiting Smolensk to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, which took place in forests outside the town. The massacre of Polish officers by Russian secret police was one of the most notorious incidents of the second world war, and has long been a source of tension between Warsaw and Moscow.

On Wednesday, Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk attended a joint ceremony at Katyn with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Kaczynski, who had poor relations with the Kremlin, was making a separate trip to the spot.

Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev said that Putin would head a special commission to investigate Kaczynski's death and the circumstances of the crash. The emergency services minister Sergei Shoigu was also rushing to the scene at Severny airport, about 275 miles west of Moscow on Medvedev's instruction, Interfax reported.

Source: guardian.co.uk/

Polish president killed in plane crash: officials

MOSCOW — Polish President Lech Kaczynski and scores of other people were killed Saturday when the president's plane crashed on landing in the western Russian city of Smolensk, officials said.

The Smolensk regional governor, Sergei Antufiev, said the plane clipped treetops as it approached to land at an airport outside Smolensk and crashed, breaking into several pieces.

Russian television broadcast live footage showing the plane's wreckage scattered in a forest with parts of it still on fire.

Russian news agencies reported there were at least 80 people aboard the plane -- some reports said there were as many as 132 people on board -- and Antufiev said no one had survived.

"It clipped the tops of the trees, crashed down and broke into pieces," the governor of the Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiev, told Russia-24 television news network by telephone from Smolensk.

"There were no survivors."

The television pictures showed the plane broken into many pieces, including engines and a huge chunk of the plane's vertical stabilizer caked in mud, strewn over a large area in forest that was blanketed with fog.

Firefighters were dousing water on portions of the plane that were still ablaze while groups of security personnel in camouflage uniforms and clusters of investigators in civilian clothes inspected the wreckage.

The Russian foreign ministry told Interfax news agency that the plane had crashed in heavy fog.

Officials in Warsaw confirmed that Kaczynski was aboard the plane that crashed and Russian television broadcast video shot earlier Saturday of the president and his wife boarding the plane in Warsaw.

Polish foreign ministry spokesman Piotr Pszkowski said that the army chief of staff and Deputy Foreign Minsiter Andrzej Kremer were also on board the plane.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev immediately appointed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the head of a commission to investigate the crash and sent Russia's emergency situations minister, Sergei Shoigu, to the site.

The aircraft crashed a few hundred metres short of the runway at the Severny airport outside Smolensk, ITAR-TASS news agency reported, quoting rescuers at the site.

The flight data recorders of the plane had not yet been located but experts were on the scene and the search for them was under way, ITAR-TASS said.

Kaczynski, the identical twin brother of former prime minister Jaroslaw, was on his way to attend commemorative ceremonies at the forest of Katyn in western Russia where 22,000 Poles were killed by Soviet troops 70 years ago.

The crash of his plane occurred three days after Putin and his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, together attended a memorial for the victims of the massacre at Katyn.

The Putin-Tusk meeting there was seen as a huge symbolic advance in Russia's often thorny relations with Poland.

Source: AFP

Polish president feared dead in crash

Lech Kacyznski, Poland’s president, was feared dead Saturday morning when the airliner carrying him and a large delegation crashed near the Russian city of Smolensk; Piotr Paszkowski, the foreign ministry spokesman, says there were 88 people aboard the aircraft, and that there were no survivors.

The Russian-built Tu-154 airliner apparently hit a tree just before 11 am local time while landing in foggy conditions, Mr Paszkowski told the Gazeta Wyborcza website. The airliner then caught fire.

“It looks very bad,” said Mr Paszkowski.

Reporters on the scene said they could see remnants of the airplane scattered among the trees near the airport.

As well as Mr Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, the aircraft was carrying a delegation of as many as 132 people that reportedly included Ryszard Kaczorowski, the former president of Poland’s London-based government-in-exile, Slawomir Skrzypek, the central bank governor, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, the presidential candidate of the left-wing Democratic Left Alliance, as well as bishops, military officials and other dignitaries.

They were flying to Russia to take part in commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the killing of 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviets in 1940. The best-known murder site, Katyn, where 4,000 Poles were killed, lies just outside Smolensk.

Bronislaw Komorowski, the speaker of parliament, is headed to Warsaw to take over Mr Kaczynski’’s duties.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Source:

Putin: Easing the burden of memory

Certain dates, events, and places become emblems of unforgettable suffering for an entire people. Auschwitz holds that meaning for Jews, as does the 1915 death march for Armenians or the 1922 Smyrna massacre for Greeks. Polish memory is haunted by the Red Army’s execution of 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in the Katyn forest in the spring of 1940.

So Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was making a valuable, if belated, gesture of reconciliation Wednesday when he laid a wreath at the Katyn gravesite, under a memorial inscribed with the names of the murdered Polish prisoners of war. During the communist era, Polish schoolchildren were taught that the Katyn crimes were committed by the Nazis. Poles knew this was an official lie. Finally, in 1992, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin ended the lies by releasing a copy of a Stalin-era document resolving to kill the Polish prisoners because they were “inveterate and incorrigible enemies of the Soviet power.’’

Hard as it may be, Putin should now complete the work of reconciliation by recognizing the Katyn massacre as a war crime and ordering that all remaining Stalinist archives on that crime be opened to researchers. Truth is inseparable from reconciliation.

Source: boston.com/

Polish Air Force 1 Crashed Heading for Katyn Massacre Anniversary

The plane that crashed carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 86 others near Smolensk was taking the passengers to mark the Katyn massacre near the town.

Kaczynski was due to visit Smolensk to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when Soviet troops killed thousands of Poles.

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, 'Katyń crime'), was a mass murder of thousands of Polish prisoners of war (primarily military officers), intellectuals, policemen, and other public servants by the Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps. Dated March 5, 1940, this official document was then approved (signed) by the entire Soviet Politburo including Joseph Stalin and Beria.

The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, the most commonly cited number being 21 768. The victims were murdered in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkov prisons and elsewhere. About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, the rest being Poles arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials."

Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943. The revelation led to the end of diplomatic relations between Moscow and the London-based Polish government-in-exile.

Source: novinite.com/

Parliament pays tribute to Katyn victims

Poland’s parliament, Friday, paid tribute to the memory of Polish POWs and Katyn “victims of the genocidal Soviet regime”.



In a special resolution, the parliament said that the decision to murder over 20, 000 Polish officers in 1940 taken by the Soviet authorities was a violation of the fundamental legal and moral principles. The resolution also refers to the lies about Katyn proffered for half a century by Soviet propaganda.



Polish parliamentarians paid tribute to all the victims of Stalin’s communism, saying that the painful experiences of the 20th century’s totalitarian systems should unite Poles with the Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians and not divide them.



Polish MPs describe the presence of the Polish and Russian Prime Ministers at the Katyn ceremony two days ago as an important gesture of a symbolic significance. Polish-Russian reconciliation, the resolution says in closing, is possible only on the basis of the respect for truth and memory.



The resolution was passed as special train left from Warsaw to Smolensk went on Friday carrying several hundred relatives of Polish prisoners murdered by the NKVD in April 1940.



Participants will take part in a ceremony on Saturday in the Katyn Forest, attended by President Lech Kaczynski, in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre.
(mk/pg)

Source: thenews.pl/

Putin mourns Stalin-era massacre of Polish forces in unprecedented gesture to Poland

MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended a memorial ceremony on Wednesday for 22,000 Polish prisoners who were killed by Soviet secret police during World War II in an unprecedented gesture of good will and reconciliation to Poland.

Putin - accompanied by his Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk - became the first Russian leader to ever commemorate the Katyn massacres with a Polish leader, and said the two nations' "fates had been inexorably joined" by the atrocities.

The 22,000 Polish officers, prisoners and intellectuals were massacred by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's secret police in 1940 in Katyn, a village near Russia's border with Belarus.

In what appeared to be his harshest condemnation of Stalin's rule to date, Putin said: "In our country there has been a clear political, legal and moral judgment made of the evil acts of this totalitarian regime, and this judgment cannot be revised."

But his speech stopped short of offering any apology to the Polish nation or calling the massacres a war crime, as some commentators in Poland had expected.

Also, while giving the go-ahead to a joint historic commission on the matter, Putin gave no concrete pledge that all Soviet archives documenting it would finally be unsealed.

Tusk used his emotional speech about the Polish victims to push Putin on this point.

"Prime minister, they are here. They are in this soil. The eye sockets of their bullet-pierced sculls are looking and waiting to see whether we are able to transform violence and lies into reconciliation," Tusk said.

For half a century, Soviet officials claimed that the mass executions had been carried out by Nazi occupiers during the Second World War. But the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev's rule admitted in 1990 that the crimes had been committed by Stalin's NKVD secret police, a precursor to the KGB.

The disclosure opened the floodgates of historical consciousness across the Soviet Union, speeding its demise as nations across the Eastern bloc awoke to the horrors of the Soviet regime and sought independence.

As recently as December, Putin resisted a broad denunciation of Stalin's reign. He told a call-in show with the Russian public that it was "impossible to make an overall judgment" against Stalin because he had industrialized the nation and played a key role in defeating the Nazis.

Russia also has clashed with its neighbours in Eastern Europe over what it has perceived as offences to the legacy of Stalin and the Red Army. The relocation of a Soviet war memorial in Estonia in 2007 was met with a bristling reaction from Moscow, as was a resolution made by European lawmakers in 2009 equating Stalinism and Fascism.

Putin's meeting with Tusk seems to be part of a broader Kremlin effort to avoid similar confrontations and improve ties with Europe.

President Dmitry Medvedev wrapped up a two-day visit to Slovakia on Tuesday, and said in the capital, Bratislava, that the EU-member state was a "very convenient and open door for Russia to the European Union."

"We are ready to actively go through this door," Medvedev said during a televised news conference with his Slovak counterpart, Ivan Gasparovic.

During the visit - marking the 65th anniversary of the Slovak capital's liberation from Nazi rule - Medvedev gave Slovak officials World War II documents from Russia's state archives.

Associated Press writer Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed to this report.

Source:AFP

Poland president dead as west Russia plane crash kills 132

Polish president Lech Kaczynski was killed on Saturday as his plane crashed on approach to Smolensk airport in western Russia, local officials said.

One hundred and thirty-two passengers in total were on board the plane, Polish officials told Haaretz, adding that the crash appeared accidental and that so far there was no suspicion of a terror attack.

There was no indication as to whether the crash was caused by a technical failure or human error.
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Poland's foreign ministry confirmed that the president and his wife, Maria, were aboard the plane. Polish state news agency PAP said there were no survivors in the crash, recorded at 10:50AM local time some 400km west of Moscow.

The Russian-built Tupolev Tu-154, which was over 20 years old, airplane went down some 1.5km from Smolensk airport in foggy conditions. The plane reportedly struck trees as it approached the airport and caught fire. The flames have since been extinguished.

Polish sources told Haaretz that despite a recent upgrade, the Smolensk airport not been fitted with special anti-fog radar common in the West.

A Polish official said the head of the Polish army and the head of the presidential administration were also on board the plane, along with the central bank governor and the other senior officials.

"The plane caught fire after the crash. Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane," said a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman in Warsaw.

Kaczynski was due to visit Smolensk to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when Soviet troops killed 22,000 Poles. Planned ceremonies in Katyn were called off. Attendees said they would instead pray for the victims of the plane crash

The Polish government will hold an extraordinary meeting later on Saturday, the government press office said in a statement.

Bronislaw Komorowski, the speaker of Poland's parliament and a former defense minister will take over as interim president, sources told Haaretz.

Komorovski had already been named as a candidate to succeed Kaczynski following elections later in 2010.

Kaczynski, 60, became president in December 2005 after defeatingcurrent Prime Minister Donald Tusk in that year's presidential vote. The nationalist conservative was the twin brother of Poland's opposition
leader, former prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski

Source: haaretz.com/

Reports are coming of a plane carrying the Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife has crashed in Russia killing all passengers.

Initial reports had said that at least 87 people were killed in the crash but officials have confirmed that all passengers on the plain heading to an airport in Smolensk a Western city in Russia have been killed.

Reports also say that the Chief of General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces and the Polish central bank governor was also on the plain.

Lech Kaczynski and his wife were due to visit the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, in which thousands of Poles were killed by Russian troops in the Soviet era.

The Polish Foreign Ministry also confirmed that the Polish president Lech Kaczynski was on board the plain the crashed at 10:56AM local time.

The Tupolev Tu-154 model plain is thought to have crashed in foggy weather but no official comment has come from the Polish or Russian government.

The Tupolev Tu-154, a Soviet era built plain is banned in many airports around the world.

Source: nationalturk.com/

Polish President dies in plane crash

Eighty-seven people including Polish President Lech Kaczynski died when a plane flying from Warsaw crashed near its intended destination in the Russian city of Smolensk, Itar-Tass news agency reported, citing the Russian Emergencies Ministry.

The incident happened in thick fog as the aircraft came in to land.


Source: timesofmalta.com/

Plane crash 'carrying Polish president' kills 87 people

Reports from Moscow say a plane carrying the Polish president Lech Kaczynski has crashed in western Russia and at least 87 people have been killed.

Russian media and the foreign Polish ministry is alleged to have said the president and his wife were on board the plane at the time, and it is not yet known whether there has been any survivors.

It is believed the plane crashed this morning near the city of Smolensk, killing 87 people.

Mr Kaczynski was due to visit the city to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre; during which Russian soldiers killed 22,000 Polish prisoners of war 70 years ago.

Source: inthenews.co.uk/

Crash kills scores, Poland’s president

SMOLENSK, Russia - Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife died Saturday along with about 130 other passengers when their plane crashed while coming in for a landing in western Russia, officials said.

The governor of the Smolensk region, where the crash took place about 11 a.m. (3 a.m. ET), said no one survived.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart," Sergei Anufriev said on state news channel Rossiya-24. "Nobody has survived the disaster."

The Polish foreign ministry confirmed that Kaczynski and his wife were aboard the plane.

The head of Russia's top investigative body, Sergei Markin, said there were a total of 132 people on the plane, a Tu-154.

A Polish government official said the head of the Polish army and the head of the presidential administration were also on board the plane, along with families of other senior officials.

"The plane caught fire after the crash. Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane," said a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman in Warsaw.

Editor's note: Please check back for details on this breaking news story.

Source: msnbc.msn.com/