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October 16, 2008
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Thursday
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Shawwal 16, 1429
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Polish PM, president tussle over plane to EU summit
BRUSSELS, Oct 15: Poland’s prime minister has denied the country’s president a government flight in an attempt to prevent him from attending the European Union summit in a struggle for power in Warsaw.
The world may be facing its biggest economic crisis in 80 years, but for the past weeks Polish leaders have locked horns repeatedly over who should represent the biggest ex-communist EU newcomer at the summit on Wednesday and Thursday.
Centre-right Prime Minister Donald Tusk, backed by lawyers, has argued he is entitled to lead the Polish delegation unless he picks someone else, but conservative President Lech Kaczynski, a Eurosceptic, said he was going to Brussels no matter what.Mr Tusk told reporters that technically the president was going to Brussels on a private visit, not to attend the summit. “The line-up of the Polish delegation has already been decided upon,” he told reporters in the Belgian capital. “The president is going to Brussels, but not for the EU summit.”
Tusk appeared to gain the upper hand, coming to Brussels on Tuesday evening in a government plane which he refused to send back to Warsaw to fetch the president, diplomats said. But Kaczynski chartered a plane at the last moment and left for Brussels on today Polish news media reported.
The government-controlled foreign ministry has not secured a badge for the president allowing him to enter the summit building, but diplomats said the leader was unlikely to be turned away if he showed up. “This does not look serious -- as if there were not more important things to quarrel about,” said one EU diplomat, who asked not be named. Polish news media have compared the leaders to boys fighting over toys in a sand-pit.
Some diplomats quipped that before Tusk won power last year, it did not matter who attended the summit since the cabined was headed by the president’s identical twin, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
The government fears Kaczynski’s presence would spoil Warsaw’s delicate diplomacy aimed at watering down the EU’s plan to fight climate change, which Warsaw says would harm the Polish economy.—Reuters
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