Polish foreign minister calls relations with Russia "mature"

Oct 28, 2010, 15:29 GMT

Warsaw - Polish relations with Russia are 'mature, despite turbulence,' Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Thursday during a visit from his Russian counterpart.

Sikorski met with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss sensitive topics in bilateral relations, including cooperation on two separate probes by Russia and Poland into the April 10 plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others.

Sikorski said that Polish and Russian experts will be consulted for the final investigative report on the plane crash. Lavrov said work between Polish and Russian specialists on the probes was 'unprecedented.'

Polish officials had said in August that Russia was slow in turning over documents on the probe to Polish prosecutors, though they said the delay was likely procedural.

Lavrov and Sikorski co-chaired a session Thursday of a committee on Polish-Russian cooperation.

On the committee's agenda was Russia handing over documents on their probe into a massacre of Polish military officers by the Soviet Red Army during World War II.

The massacre that took place at Katyn, in Russia, has remained a sore spot in Polish-Russian relations, with Warsaw saying it needs more archival material to bring the perpetrators to justice.

For decades, Moscow blamed Nazi German forces for the massacre, only to finally admit the Red Army's role.

Lavrov was later to meet with President Bronislaw Komorowski.

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