WARSAW DISAVOWS STATEMENT BY FOREIGN MINISTRY PRESS SECRETARY

RIA Novosti ^ | March 11

[jb6]

MOSCOW, March 11 (RIA Novosti) - Utterances by the press secretary of the Polish Foreign Ministry do not reflect the official position of Warsaw on the destruction of the leader of Chechen separatists, Aslan Maskhadov. Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld said this in the telephone conversation on Friday with his Russian analog Sergei Lavrov.

"The Polish foreign minister expressed regret in connection with the utterances by the press secretary of the Foreign Ministry of Poland, which, he said, do not reflect the official position of Warsaw on this question", reads the communique of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The telephone conversation was held on the initiative of the Russian side.

"The Russian foreign minister characterized the media-spread anti-Russian assessment by Polish official representatives of the fact of destruction of Maskhadov as unacceptable and across the lines of the elementary norms of relations between the states, more so that they are members of the global antiterrorist coalition", the ministerial communique reads.

The Russian side "confirms the readiness to go on informing the Polish colleagues of the real state of affairs in the North Caucasus, concrete aspects of activities of international terrorists, their inspirers and accomplices so that the assessment in Warsaw of the processes going on there rely on trustworthy facts, instead of inventions", the communique goes on to read.

Aleksander Cesko, official spokesman for the Polish Foreign Ministry, called the destruction of Aslan Maskhadov "not just a crime but also political stupidity and a big mistake".

[atomic_dog]

Hmmmm, looks like Poland's just about ready for the EU.