Polish president and wife buried in lavish state funeral

Poland's president Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria were buried today in an elaborate state funeral in Krakow, with its archbishop urging Russia and Poland to seize the opportunity for reconciliation. Standing in front of the flag-draped coffins of Kaczynski and his wife, cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz said the president's tragic death during a plane crash last Saturday should be the trigger for a profound and long-awaited coming together between "our two great Slavic nations". The volcanic ash paralysing air travel across Europe prevented several world leaders from attending yesterday's ceremony. US president Barack Obama, the French president Nicholas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel were all forced to cancel, as were foreign secretary David Miliband and Prince Charles. But Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev did fly in from Moscow. Addressing Medvedev directly, Dziwisz said Russia's unstinting response to the crash which killed 96 people, including Poland's top military generals, had gone some way to healing the wounds of the Katyn massacre 70 years ago. "Seventy years ago Katyn divided our two nations. But the tragedy of eight days ago has generated a lot of good," Dziwisz said. "The tragedy of eight days ago and the sympathy and help extended by the Russians in these days give us hope for better relations between our two great nations." He went on: "The hope now is … that we can move forward together." The cardinal said that Kaczynski – a vociferous opponent of the Kremlin – had planned to deliver a speech in Katyn calling for both sides to put aside their historical grievances. The Katyn forest in western Russia was where Soviet secret police executed 22,000 Polish officers and members of the intelligentsia, in one of the darkest episodes of the second world war. Stalin blamed the crime on the Nazis. Since the disaster, Russia has demonstrated surprising and unprecedented solidarity with Poland. Russia's prime minister Vladimir Putin travelled to the crash site with Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk, while Russian investigators have worked closely with their Polish counterparts – a move that has dispelled lingering suspicions of Russian complicity. There was also hope that yesterday's ceremony held at St Mary's Basilica, a 13th century redbrick Gothic church in Krakow's old town, might give new impulses to Russia's sometimes fraught relationship with the EU. Poland's previously poor relations with Moscow have frequently made EU-Moscow negotiations problematic. today, Medvedev shared a pew with leaders from the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, as well as from Ukraine Belarus and Armenia, many of whom scrambled to Krakow by car or train. At one point the leaders shook hands. The Kaczynskis' daughter Marta and the president's twin brother Jaroslaw sat in the front row, as Mozart's Requiem was played. After the mass, the bodies of the first couple were carried on green gun carriages in solemn funeral procession across the Renaissance old town. The procession then moved slowly up to Wawel hill, with Poland's political leaders trailing behind including Tusk and Poland's interim president Bronislaw Komorowski. Thousands of mourners turned out. Many threw flowers on the coffins. Kaczysnki and his wife were later interred in the crypt of Wawel cathedral, the traditional burial place for Poland's kings, national heroes, poets, statesman and romantic revolutionaries. The decision to bury Kaczynski alongside such illustrious figures has proved contentious – with some arguing that the choice was inappropriate, given his divisive brand of conservative-Catholic politics. Some Poles have staged protest rallies and joined petitions on the social media site Facebook against the decision to bury Kaczynski in such a sacred spot. Yesterday, however, the mood was sombre. Many of those unable to get to the centre of Krakow watched the funeral on video screens set up in towns and cities. Kaczynski, president since 2005, was a polarising figure whose support levels had fallen to about 20% before his death. He had been expected to lose a presidential election due in the autumn and now likely to be held on 20 June. The protests were the first cracks in an otherwise remarkable display of national unity since the crash. Karolina Rajchel, 19, a student who travelled five hours from Wroclaw, said she had not supported every step that Kaczynski took, but called the protests "out of place" in light of his death. "Kaczynski had good and bad qualities but now you shouldn't say anything bad about the dead," she told the Associated Press. "I am here to honour the president as well as all those who died." Among those buried there are Jozef Pilsudski; Romantic-era poet Adam Mickiewicz; and Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a hero of the American Revolution and of Poland's 1794 uprising against Russia's occupation.