Moscow: Russia said on Wednesday it had
completed an investigation into the aviation catastrophe that
killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski and 95 others in
Smolensk in April.
"The technical commission of the Interstate Aviation
Committee, all its sub-commissions and expert groups have
completed their work on the investigation of the plane`s
catastrophe," Oleg Yermolov, the committee`s deputy head, told
reporters.
Earlier in the day the committee handed Poland`s chief
investigator, Edmund Klich, a 200-page report containing
results of the investigation on the Polish airliner that
crashed near Smolensk in northwestern Russia in April, killing
Kaczynski, his wife and all 94 other people aboard the flight.
Yermolov told reporters that Poland had now 60 days to
submit its comments before the report on the reasons for the
disaster is published. He declined to elaborate on why the
Tupolev-154 crashed as it was trying to land in fog.
Kaczynski and dozens of top officials had been flying
to Russia to attend a ceremony marking the 1940 massacre in
Katyn forest of thousands of Polish army officers at the
orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
The months since the tragedy have seen a warming of
once-tense relations between Russia and Poland.
Russia has stressed that it is handing full
information to Poland and has made efforts to be open to the
media, although Warsaw has complained of delays in the
investigation.
PTI
