Foreign ministry did not seek help abroad in probing 2010 disaster: daily
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
06.10.2016 10:29
Poland’s foreign ministry under its previous head Radosław Sikorski did not ask for international help in probing the 2010 Polish presidential plane crash in Smolensk, according to the Gazeta Polska Codziennie daily.
The site of the Polish presidential plane crash in 2010. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
No Polish diplomatic missions, including those in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and Italy, has documents confirming that Poland sought such help, Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski was cited as saying by the paper.
“Verbal reports that I received from foreign ministry staff indicate that Sikorski already on 10 April 2010 forbade research and legal work regarding this, justifying the decision [by saying] that the case had been taken over by the Prime Minister’s Office and therefore the Foreign Ministry would not conduct any legal analysis on this topic,” Waszczykowski was quoted as saying.
Sikorski had repeatedly declared that he was doing everything to have the wreckage of the crashed presidential plane returned to Poland, Gazeta Polska Codziennie said.
After coming to power last year, Poland's governing Law and Justice (PiS) party set up a new commission to probe the April 2010 crash in Smolensk, western Russia.
In its first press conference last month, the commission outlined a number of shortcomings in official reports on the crash by Russian authorities and the previous Polish government led by the Civic Platform (PO) party.
The crash in western Russia in 2010 killed President Lech Kaczyński, the twin brother of PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, and 95 others, including high-ranking Polish political and military leaders.
Russia has never returned the wreckage of the Tu-154M plane to Poland. (pk)
Source: Gazeta Polska Codziennie