Prime Minister Tusk has claimed that he was misquoted by the BBC in a programme in which he was reported to have said that Russia is “partly to blame” for the Smolensk catastrophe a year ago.

On Wednesday night, the BBC’s Newsnight programme looked into the presidential plane crash, including interviews with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the brother of the late president, as well as Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov.

A day later, however, the Polish Government Information Centre released the transcript of the interview with Donald Tusk in an attempt to clear up any confusion that the statement may have caused.

The move comes after reports that the Russian investigation committee into the Smolensk crash may have blamed Poland for dodging cooperation in the ongoing investigations.

“Only two out of six motions from the [Russian] invesigation committee have been answered to by the [relevant] Polish authorities,” spokesman of the Russian committee General Vladamir Markin is quoted as saying, adding that the findings which have been passed on “are only partial.” (jb)

Source: Gazeta Wyborcza