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:

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