Most citizens of Krakow in southern Poland want a monument to the controversial communist-era spy Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski to be erected near the main train station.

At the end of 2009, Krakow authorities came up with the idea to honour the late Col. Ryszard Kuklinski by erecting a monument in the city. City councilors conducted an opinion poll, asking the citizens of Krakow where they would like the monument to be located.

Out of over 500 people who participated in the survey, 124 voted for Jan Nowak Jezioranski’s Square (named after one of the most notable resistance fighters during II WW), near the main train station in Krakow and almost 100 for Ronald Reagan’s Square in the Nowa Huta district. On 17 March the city council will take a final decision where the monument should stand and organize a contest for sculptors.

Ryszard Kuklinski remains a controversial figure - for some he was a hero, for others a traitor.

Kuklinski was one of the top officers of the General Staff in the Polish Armed Forces during the 1970s in communist Poland. He defected to the United States on the eve of the introduction of Martial Law in December 1981. During that period he supplied the Americans with plans of martial law as well as other secret documents of the Warsaw Pact, including information about the Soviet Red Army.

Kuklinski sentenced to death  in absentia by court martial in 1982. It was not until the late 1990s that in a free and democratic Poland his sentence was reversed and his honour reinstated. (mg/di)