WARSAW (Reuters) - Security officers removed a wooden cross from in front of Poland's presidential palace on Thursday, infuriating some supporters of the late president Lech Kaczynski whose death in a plane crash it was meant to honour.
Scouts erected the cross shortly after the April 10 crash to mourn the president and the 95 other victims, but it has come to symbolise Poland's political divisions, with die hard Kaczynski supporters resisting efforts by the authorities to remove it.
"Today, at around 8 in the morning (0600 GMT), the cross commemorating national mourning after the crash in Smolensk was moved into the chapel in the presidential palace," presidential aide Jacek Michalowski told a news conference.
The cross will remain there until the authorities are able to implement an earlier agreement reached between the presidential palace, the Catholic Church and the scouts to install the object in a nearby church, he said.
"Maintaining the status quo was hurting the authority of the state and the Church and was hurting the religious feelings of many Poles. The cross had become hostage to political games and ideological rows," said Michalowski.
The cross became a rallying point for some ultra-Catholic, nationalist supporters of Poland's main opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), whose leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the twin brother of the late president.
The self-proclaimed 'cross defenders', who had been staging a round-the-clock vigil in front of the presidential palace, were surprised by the early morning move.
ANGER
"This is ignoring the voice of society. Thousands of people were gathering here to pray by this cross. It's not their (the authorities') property to take it and hide it," Dariusz Wernicki, a leader of the group, told Reuters.
Beata Gosiewska, the widow of one of the crash victims and a PiS supporter, called the move a "disgrace".
Warsaw's Catholic Church welcomed the new situation, adding that families of the crash victims might take the cross on a pilgrimage to the site of the disaster, near Smolensk in Russia, before it gets a permanent home in a Warsaw church.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose centrist government has often clashed with the Kaczynski twins, also applauded the move.
"It was a good decision. I think it was expected by people in Poland and Warsaw. Better late than never," he told reporters in Brussels.
Political analysts were divided over whether the moving of the cross would end the dispute or spark new rallies.
(Additional reporting by Marcin Grajewski in Brussels)
(Editing by Gareth Jones and Noah Barkin)
Copyright © 2010 Reuters
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