PM Tusk Slates Russian Report on Smolensk Plane Crash

December 20, 2010 Prime Minister Donald Tusk criticized as "unacceptable" on Friday a Russian report on the plane crash that killed 96 Polish top officials including Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, on April 10, near Smolensk airport in western Russia. "In the view of negligence, errors and a lack of positive reaction to Polish suggestions, we're able to say that some conclusions in the report are baseless." Tusk told reporters in Brussels on the sidelines of a European Union summit. Tusk slated the investigation but did not actually go into any further details only saying that the report did not comply fully with the Chicago convention, the global accord that regulates probes of plane crashes. After months of investigation, the Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee MAK handed its report on the causes of the crash to Poland last month. On Friday Poland sent back its own 148-page opinion on MAK's findings, which has to be taken into account by the Russian side before releasing the final report. Source: The Warsaw Voice