By Surender Bhutani, IANS,
Warsaw : Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna will head the Indian delegation that will attend the funeral ceremony of President Lech Kaczynski who was killed Saturday in an air crash in Russia.
World leaders, including President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are expected to gather in Krakow, the medieval capital of Poland.
The burial ceremony of Kaczynski and his wife Maria will take place Sunday. Their bodies will be placed alongside Poland’s key historical figures.
“The government headed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk has gone out of its way to arrange a royal ceremony for his erstwhile opponent. That shows Poland has matured over the years and it has become a civilised democratic polity where the differences and the bitterness of the past have been forgotten and forgiven after death,” said Boguslaw Zakrzewski, a retired diplomat.