Up to 100,000 mourners attend Warsaw commemoration

Poland paid an emotional
tribute on Saturday to President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria
and 94 other mostly senior political and military officials
killed in a plane crash a week ago in Russia.
Up to 100,000 mourners, many clutching red-and-white
national flags threaded with black ribbons, packed into the vast
Pilsudski Square in central Warsaw to commemorate the victims of
the country's most devastating accident since World War Two.
The commemoration came a day before Kaczynski's burial,
which U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela
Merkel had to cancel plans to attend because of volcanic ash
over Europe that closed airports.
Saturday's commemoration included a three-gun salute and a
Roman Catholic requiem mass, and the crowd was addressed by
Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
"They all had their dreams and hopes for the future of their
homeland. This is a serious test for us to understand those hopes
well and take them into the future," said Tusk, who had been a
political rival of Kaczynski's.
"This is the most we can do for them. We are here to
remember them. Poland is here to remember them. We will not
forget," he said.
Behind him on the podium a tall, white cross rose up between
two large black panels bearing the portraits of all the dead,
whose names an actor read out one by one.
Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw, a former prime minister
who now heads Poland's main opposition party, sat at the front
of the mourners with other family members, including the
president's daughter Marta, 29. Kaczynski had two grandchildren.
Sunday's burial of Kaczynski and his wife is to take place
in the crypt of Wawel cathedral in the ancient capital of Krakow
in southern Poland.
After Obama and Merkel's decision not to attend because of
flight cancellations due to the ash cloud spreading over Europe
from an Icelandic volcano, it was unclear how many other world
leaders would be able to be there.
Canada's prime minister, Spain's King Juan Carlos and
Britain's Prince Charles and Foreign Secretary David Miliband
were among others forced to cancel their travel plans.
Poland's meteorology institute said the cloud covered all of
Poland on Saturday but would partly disperse by early Sunday.
The national carrier LOT's planes will be grounded until
1200 GMT on Monday, the Polish state news agency PAP said.
The crash stunned Poland. Tens of thousands lined the
streets of Warsaw for the return of the coffins from Russia and
the area in front of Kaczynski's palace in Warsaw's picturesque
Old Town has been transformed into a shrine to the dead,
bedecked with candles, flowers, crucifixes and national flags.
Presidential aide Jacek Sasin said 180,000 mourners had
filed past the coffins since they went on public display in the
palace on Tuesday. The coffins were to remain on display in
Warsaw cathedral on Saturday night where many more people were
expected to pay their respects.
Kaczynski and his entourage had been heading to Katyn forest
near Smolensk in western Russia last Saturday to commemorate the
70th anniversary of the massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and
intellectuals by the Soviet secret police.
Poland's acting President Bronislaw Komorowski said the
tragedy had united Poles of all political beliefs and he also
thanked Russia's leaders for their close cooperation immediately
after the crash and for their gestures of solidarity.
Poland has long had a difficult relationship with Russia,
its communist-era overlord, but Poles hope their second Katyn
tragedy may bolster a cautious rapprochement begun by Tusk.
Last Sunday, in an abrupt change of tack, Moscow allowed for
the first time a leading state channel to air Polish director
Andrzej Wajda's harrowing film "Katyn" that chronicles the 1940
massacre. For decades until 1990, Moscow had denied Soviet
responsibility for the murders, blaming   nazi  Germany instead.
"It has become known in Russia that (Kaczynski's entourage)
were headed to Katyn on a pilgrimage of truth, in defence of a
truth, the voicing of which had been punishable by oppression
and jail. That truth has now triumphed," Komorowski said.