Poland tackles security challenge of state funeral

[April 20, 2010]  WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Hundreds of Poles gathered in grief at Warsaw's airport Thursday for a state ceremony honoring another victim of the plane crash in Russia: the official who led Poland's government in exile when the country was ruled by communists.

A military plane traveled from Russia with the body of Ryszard Kaczorowski, who headed the country's government in exile in London shortly before communism's demise in Poland.

His casket was draped in the red-and-white Polish flag, flanked by a sabre-bearing honor guard. His widow and daughters, dressed in black, wept at his coffin and kissed it.

Kaczorowski was among the 96 people killed in a plane crash Saturday in western Russia en route to ceremonies to honor Polish victims of the World War II Katyn massacres of Polish officers by the forerunner of the Soviet secret police.

His body was driven in a black hearse to lie in state in Warsaw's Belvedere palace, a columned building that belonged to Poland's last king, until a state funeral Saturday.

The exile leadership was established during the Nazi occupation of Poland and continued to declare itself the rightful government during the decades of communism, until Lech Walesa became Poland's first popularly elected president in 1990.

The exiled government was not legally recognized, but it played a symbolic role in keeping alive the hopes of one day throwing off Soviet-imposed communist rule.

Poles also continued long lines at the presidential palace, some waiting as long as 13 hours, to view the body of President Lech Kaczynski and the much-loved first lady Maria Kaczynska.

As the country continued to mourn, the government tackled the massive security challenge of Sunday's state funeral in Krakow, an event that will be attended by many world leaders, including President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and royalty such as Britain's Prince Charles.

Medvedev, in an interview with Russia Today, an English-language state television channel, said Saturday's crash was "truly was a dreadful tragedy, for the Polish nation first of all, not to mention family members of the deceased, but also for the world order in general."

He said, "When a country's president and a number of its leaders die in a catastrophe, to some extent it's a trial for a society as well as for the international system."

He said the investigation under way must find out all that happened during the crash.

That probe is moving fairly quickly, aviation experts said, but some Poles have complained about a lack of public information, including the transcript of conversation in the cockpit before the accident.

The Polish pilots ignored pleas by Russian traffic controllers at an airport near Smolensk to land elsewhere. Some in Poland are speculating that the pilots ignored the risks in order to keep President Kaczynski on schedule for a memorial for Polish officers executed by Soviet secret police in the Katyn forest in 1940.

Sunday's state funeral in mostly Roman Catholic Poland will begin at begin at 2 p.m. (1200 GMT) with a Mass at St. Mary's Basilica. The bodies of the first couple will then be carried in a funeral procession across the Old Town and up the Wawel hill, site of a castle and a fortification wall surrounding the cathedral.

Some Poles criticized the decision to bury Kaczynski, whose combative style earned him many opponents, in a place reserved for the most esteemed of national figures.

[Associated Press; By VANESSA GERA and MATT MOORE]

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