Kaczynski cross removed from presidential palace (Roundup)

Sep 16, 2010, 15:43 GMT

Warsaw - Officials removed a cross Thursday morning from outside the presidential palace after months of controversy over the tribute placed there in memory of Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash in April.

The cross was moved to a chapel inside the presidential palace, where it will be kept until it is placed at a nearby church, said Jacek Michalowski, head of the presidential chancellery.

The wooden cross was placed outside the palace by scouts to commemorate Kaczynski after his death with 95 others in a plane crash on April 10 in Smolensk, Russia.

The cross has sparked fierce protests and a debate about the separation of church and state in Poland.

'It is a good decision, and I think one that was expected by many Poles and especially by Warsaw residents,' Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters in Brussels.

'The cross, and that spot, had become a pretext to create conflict, and that's not what we had in mind during the period of mourning,' he added.

Legendary former union leader Lech Walesa, known as a proud Catholic, said he would give his life for the religious symbol, 'but for a cross that was respected, not one used in a political game,' he told TVN 24.

Others criticized the decision to move the cross, saying the public had not been consulted.

'This is conduct like during communist times,' the Polish Press Agency quoted Beata Gosiewska, widow of Law and Justice parliamentarian Przemyslaw Gosiewski, who died in the crash.

A small group gathered outside the palace Thursday to pray after the cross was moved from its spot.

The group vowed to put up other crosses at the spot and said officials had been arrogant to move the original cross without their approval.

Kaczynski's supporters have opposed government plans to move the cross. The Catholic fundamentalists who have been guarding the wooden cross day and night clashed with police in early August, when authorities tried to take the cross to nearby St. Anne's Church.

Newly-elected President Bronislaw Komorowski sought to defuse the row by placing a memorial plaque to the crash victims at the side wing of the palace. But Kaczynski supporters criticized the move, saying they were not consulted, and vowed to maintain their vigil until a permanent memorial was erected in place of the cross.

Kaczynski supporters say the late president never got the respect he deserved and was still being 'spat on' by his political opponents in his death.

Critics have said the cross has no place in front of a government building. Several thousand Facebook users organized a protest last month in which they demanded the cross be removed or returned to the scouts, who first placed the cross at the palace.