Presidents of Russia, Poland to mark crash date

[April 11, 2011]  SMOLENSK, Russia (AP) -- The presidents of Russia and Poland plan on Monday to visit the site of the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people last year, amid simmering tensions over a plaque commemorating the disaster.

Kaczynski's plane crashed in heavy fog on April 10, 2010, en route to a memorial service to the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Poles by the Soviet secret police.

A plaque written in Polish and put at the crash site 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 in a foreign language only.

Polish media said Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski may not lay flowers at the new plaque in protest.

Sergey Antufyev, the governor of the Smolensk region who ordered the first plaque removed, told Russian media he objected to the suggestion in the Polish wording that the plane crash was a "continuation" of the Katyn massacre, which Soviet and Russian officials have apologized for.

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.

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 Russia concede that its air traffic controllers at the Smolensk airport may have been at fault for not advising the crew strongly enough to land elsewhere.

[Associated Press; By DAVID NOWAK]

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