SMOLENSK, Russia (AP) — The presidents of Russia and Poland navigated swirling tensions Monday as they visited the site of the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people last year.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hosted Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski in the western city of Smolensk, near the site where Kaczynski’s plane crashed in heavy fog on April 10, 2010.
The two leaders sought to play down the simmering row over the plaque commemorating the victims of the crash.
A plaque inscribed in Polish and put at the crash site in November by relatives of the victims referred to the purpose of Kaczynski’s trip, calling the 1940 massacre a "genocide." But a Polish delegation that visited the site Saturday to pay tribute saw the plaque had been replaced with a dual-language one that omitted any reference to the massacre.
Russian officials said the original plaque had not been approved, and it was changed because the law forbids memorials in Russia that are written only in a foreign language.
At the time of the crash, Kaczynski and a swath of Poland’s military and political elite had been en route to a memorial service for the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Poles by the Soviet secret police in the forest near Katyn and other parts of western Russia and Ukraine.
Medvedev and Komorowski announced Monday that a joint group would decide on the best plaque to commemorate the crash victims.
Komorowski also said Warsaw is waiting for Moscow to transfer the recording from the plane’s flight recorders, but Medvedev indicated that the probe was closed.
"No one should doubt that Russia has given a thorough assessment of the reasons why that happened," he said.
Poland accepts that its pilot and crew bear the brunt of the blame for the disaster, as the Russian-led investigation found.
But Warsaw also insists that Russia should concede that its air traffic controllers at the Smolensk airport may have been at fault for not advising the plane’s crew strongly enough to land elsewhere due to the bad weather.
After holding talks, Medvedev and Komorowski traveled to the crash site to pay their respects to the victims.
An outpouring of sympathy from Russians over the 2010 plane crash had helped improve relations between Moscow and Warsaw, but squabbles continue to dog the official investigation.
The issue has deepened political divisions in Poland, where some including the late president’s brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, accuse the current Polish government of having too much faith in Moscow’s investigation.
Speaking about the Katyn massacre, Medvedev admitted Monday that "leaders of the Soviet state of that period carry responsibility for what happened" in 1940.
"In the name of the future, we have to turn this page, but in a manner that leaves it in the memory of Russia and the Poles," he added.
Medvedev also promised to complete the release of documents on the probe into the Katyn massacre. Moscow has turned over more than 87 volumes of documents to Warsaw but dozens have yet to be sent.
Komorowski urged for a total declassification of the documents.
"To close this chapter, it has to be read to the end," he said.
