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/

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/

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

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

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/

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/

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/