With four days to go to the first anniversary of the Smolensk air disaster, the debate rages on as to what to do with the wreck of the doomed TU-154 once it is returned to Poland, with President Komorowski indicating he wants it to be part of a permanent monument to the 96 who died on 10 April last year.

“The president thinks that after its return to Poland it should become a key element of a monument that will commemorate the victims of the disaster,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Polsat TV last night.

The Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski said that there are many locations where the wreck - still under investigation by the Russians - could be housed.

“[T]he Polish Army Museum, National Museum, there will be the Katyn Museum, there are many places. But I hear some other suggestions and I do not want, at this moment, to reject or accept any of them,” Minister Zdrojewski said.

Some of the families of the victims of the tragedy, which killed many of Poland’s political elite and military top brass, disagree that TU-154 wreck should be put on open display.

“The Smolensk tragedy was a terrible event and I cannot imagine it becoming an exhibit,” said Izabella Sariusz-Skąpska, the daughter of the president of the Katyn Families Federation, Andrzej Sariusz-Skąpski, who died on 10 April last year.

The Attorney General in Warsaw first requested that the plane wreck should be returned to Poland shortly after the disaster occurred.

“We want to bring the whole of the aircraft back to the country, including the last screw," Attorney General Andrzej Seremet said in January.

At the moment the wreck is being kept in a specially designated area at the airport near Smolensk in western Russia and remains in the hands of the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK).

Prime Minister Tusk has said that the Attorney General will be seeking to being the wreck back to Poland at the earliest opportunity so “the matter does not drag on” any later than it should, he said. (pg)