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Trump urged to help Poland recover presidential plane wreckage

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 04.07.2017 10:31
A group of Polish-Americans have written to US President Donald Trump urging him to follow up on campaign promises to help Poland retrieve from Russia the wreck of the presidential plane that crashed in Smolensk in 2010.
US President Donald Trump participates in the Celebrate Freedom Rally at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, US, 1 July 2017. Photo: EPA/OLIVIER DOULIERYUS President Donald Trump participates in the Celebrate Freedom Rally at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, US, 1 July 2017. Photo: EPA/OLIVIER DOULIERY

The letter said that the wreckage is required to conduct “a comprehensive and unobstructed examination of the Smolensk crash… [which] is one of the most important issues for Poland,” as the country continues to reinvestigate the disaster.

A new commission investigating the 10 April 2010 crash, in which Polish President Lech Kaczyński and all 95 others on board his plane died in Smolensk, western Russia, has concluded that earlier reports were false.

An official report into the crash issued by the previous Polish government cited a catalogue of errors on the Polish side, while also pointing to errors made by Russian staff at the control tower of Smolensk Military Airport.

A Russian report placed all the blame on the Poles.

But, a little over a year into an investigation and on the seventh anniversary of the disaster, a new commission said the Polish plane was most likely brought down by a mid-air explosion.

The letter to Trump adds that “Smolensk air control had given wrong guidance to the pilots, there was a series of critical engine related technical failures … the airplane began to disintegrate in air … and it had no contact with the infamous birch tree which had been cited by Russia as the primary cause of the crash”.

The letter’s signatories also said that Russia is withholding key evidence, against international agreements, while claiming to be conducting an investigation although it already completed and published its report in 2011.

They claim that Russia is trying to “create a false narrative” and apparently “implicate late President Lech Kaczyński” by suggesting that Kaczyński’s staff pressured pilots to land in unfavourable conditions.

The letter goes on to say that Poland requests US assistance in reclaiming the wreck of the plane, which they underline is Polish property.

It also mentions exhumations of the bodies of the victims of the disaster, which revealed a string of mix-ups.

The letter was written ahead of Trump’s visit to Poland this Wednesday and Thursday.

But Washington’s ambassador to Warsaw Paul Jones earlier this year said his country had already done everything it could to assist Poland.

“The United States did everything we can to provide assistance and information, which was fairly limited. But we contributed to the original investigation and we ensured that that same information ... we were able to provide was available to Polish authorities after the change of government here. So we don't see anything more that we are able to do. We've provided everything that we had and could provide,” Jones said.

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