Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko has said he believes Polish President Lech Kaczynski gave the final order to land his plane which crashed on Saturday in Russia, killing all on board, Interfax news agency reported, according to Reuters. Kaczynski, a combative nationalist known for his distrust of both the European Union and Russia, had been travelling to mark the 70th anniversary of the massacre of more than 20,000 Polish officers by Soviet secret police in the Katyn forest in western Russia when his plane went down on Saturday in thick fog. Russian air traffic controllers in Smolensk urged the pilot to divert to another airport because of poor visibility, but say he ignored the advice and made four attempts to land before hitting tree-tops and crashing. "It is clear who's responsible for this. Guilty or not guilty, you are the number one person and you are responsible for it," Lukashenko was quoted as saying on Wednesday by Interfax. "If the number one aircraft with the president on board is in flight and there is some kind of irregularity, the captain reports the situation directly to the president," said Lukashenko, who has stormy relations with Warsaw after a crackdown on ethnic Poles in Belarus. "The president asks whether the plane can be landed in this situation. But it's nevertheless the president who has the final say, it's he who decides whether the plane is to land or not, but the pilots don't have to obey." Russian officials are decoding the two cockpit voice recorders recovered from the flight and expect to complete a preliminary review of the data by the end of the week. Some Polish media have speculated that Kaczynski, in his determination not to miss the Katyn anniversary event, may have ordered the pilot to land but prosecutors looking into the crash have said there is no evidence so far to support that view. The speculation is based in large part on an incident in 2008, when Kaczynski flew to Georgia to show his solidarity with the country during its brief war with Russia. He grew irate when his pilot refused to land in the capital Tbilisi because of safety concerns, later accusing him of cowardice for diverting to Azerbaijan and pushing for him to be fired.
