Poland's
president ruled out any further “historic dialogue” with Ukraine following its
glorification of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) as fighters for
independence.
Polish
President Bronisław Komorowski has condemned the Ukrainian Rada's recent
recognition of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) as fighters
for independence.
“There could be no reconciliation between Poland
and Ukraine without a dialogue,” the president said in his interview
with TVN24 news channel.
“We have a lot of work ahead in [setting] our
relations with Ukraine,” he added.
President Komorowski noted that the misfortune
of the recently adopted law is that it prevents any further historic
dialogue between the two countries.
The Polish leader, however, added that communication
between the two countries is not halted and both sides should search
for a positive solution to the existing tension in relations.
On April 9 Ukraine's parliament passed a “Law
on the Status and Memory of the Participants in the Struggle
for Independence in the 20th Century”, recognizing ultranationalist
groups like the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and Organization
of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) as freedom fighters.
The above term also includes anyone who fought
for Ukraine's independence between November 1917 and August 24, 1991,
as part of formal, informal, underground, military or guerilla
groups.
The move came several hours after Komorowski's
visit to Ukraine and his call for reconciliation between the
Polish and Ukrainian people, following their difficult and complex common
history.
The president then expressed hope that old disputes and
quarrels “will not get in the way in the path to good dialogue
between the two countries and peoples.”
Over the past decade, Ukrainian-Polish relations have been strained
by Ukrainian historians' growing attempts to rehabilitate the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
Polish historians blame the killing of between
100,000 and 130,000 Polish civilians and 5,000-10,000 Ukrainian civilians
in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia on the UPA, claims which Ukrainian
historians have downplayed or denied outright.
Source:
Sputnik News 23-04-2015
