Polish cross wars rage four months after crash

Protesters urging the removal of a wooden cross gather in front of the presidential palace during clashes with ''cross defenders'' in Warsaw August 9, 2010. The road sign reads ''Attention! Cross defenders''. Picture taken on August 9, 2010.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Thousands of people protested in Warsaw during the night urging the removal of a cross erected to honor victims of a plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and dozens of national leaders in April.

The wooden cross, set up by scouts outside the presidential palace in the picturesque Old Town to commemorate 96 passengers of a government plane that crashed on April 10 in Russia, has become the focus of a fierce political dispute.

The late president's twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the main conservative opposition movement, Law and Justice (PiS), laid flowers on Tuesday and prayed with party members as church bells tolled four months after the disaster.

But the atmosphere the previous night was much less solemn.

A group of mainly young secularists organized via the social networking site Facebook held a rowdy protest singing children's songs and demanding the cross be uprooted. A man dressed as the pope waved from a balcony to the crowd, which police estimated at several thousand people. "Poland's law is being violated... and we are here to protest that the state apparatus is doing nothing about that," Adam Taras, the organizer of the protest, said on Monday night.

He was referring to an around-the-clock vigil of 'cross defenders' who want to prevent the planned moving of the memorial to a nearby church.

"We will not give up our homeland," one of the 'cross defenders' told Reuters at the site on Tuesday. "If it wasn't for the police, they would have stampeded us last night," said Czeslaw, 56, who declined to give his family name.

In the presidential election forced by his brother's death, Jaroslaw Kaczynski won a better-than-expected 47 percent by adopting a more conciliatory image to attract centrist voters. But he has since returned to his trademark combative rhetoric.

He boycotted the swearing-in of his center-right rival, President Bronislaw Komorowski, last Friday and later said the new head of state was elected "as a result of misunderstanding."

The change of style was quickly reflected in falling public support for PiS, which has dropped by 3 points to 28 percent since late July, an SMG/KRC survey showed.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose center-right Civic Platform scored 47 percent in that poll, blamed Kaczynski for politicizing the issue.

"Nobody questions the need to commemorate the victims... But I would not like... any squabbling or beating of the people as this situation does not require radical actions," he said.

"I am deeply convinced that the political responsibility for this lies with particular people who wanted to use this for their purposes," he told a news conference.

POLES APART

Poles seem divided on whether to move the cross as agreed by Komorowski's office, the scouts who originally set it up and the Warsaw church authorities.

One survey showed 71 percent want the memorial moved, but another found that 57 percent want it to stay on the site until a permanent monument is erected.

Poland's powerful Roman Catholic church is also split. Moderate clergy want to stop the divisive political use of a sacred symbol. But a radical, nationalist Catholic broadcaster, Radio Maryja, is calling on its male followers to come to Warsaw and defend the cross.

The leftist opposition, the Democratic Left Alliance, has also been collecting signatures on a petition to uphold secular state values it says are endangered by 'cross wars'.

The site, across a promenade from a popular bar, has become an hoc public debating forum attracting all views and beliefs.

Worshippers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, followers of the Invisible Pink Unicorn, prostitutes, anarchists, soccer fans, railway workers and an Elvis Presley double have all come to the site in recent days, angering 'cross defenders'.

"We will not let them," Czeslaw said. "We are here to pray and they come with alcohol to provoke us, stage some circus."

(Additional reporting by Agata Osinska, editing by Paul Taylor)