WARSAW, Poland – Poland's prime minister described as "incomplete" a report by Russian aviation investigators that blames last year's crash that killed the Polish president and 95 others mostly on the plane's pilots.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said any finding must address the question of whether any possible mistakes by Russians could have played a role in the crash. He said Poland plans to ask Moscow for consultations that would lead to a joint report acceptable to both countries.
The Russian report, published Wednesday, blamed the tragedy last April mainly on the Polish pilots who attempted a risky landing in heavy fog. It said an air force commander who allegedly had been drinking had entered the cockpit minutes before the crash and that the pilots believed the president would be angry if they did not stay on schedule.
The report met with criticism in Poland because it did not assign any responsibility to Russian air traffic controllers or the rudimentary state of the airport in Smolensk, where the crash occurred April 10.
"From the Polish point of view, this report is not complete," Tusk told reporters in Warsaw after cutting short a vacation in the Italian Alps to study the roughly 200-page findings. He added that Poles have reason to believe that "the Russian airport, the control tower and the actions taken by the controllers" played a role in causing the accident.
"We will not let the report be falsely one-sided," he said, though stressed that he does not question its basic findings.
A separate Polish report, to be published in the coming weeks, will look more deeply "and with more precision into the causes, shortcomings and negligence on the Polish side," Tusk said.
The pilots' decision to land in heavy fog at an airport with only basic navigation equipment has been accepted as the main reason for the crash. Poles, however, gave huge attention to the final report carried out by Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee to see if Russia would accept a share of the blame.
Tusk said Poland expected to see some mention made of the condition of the airport and actions taken by the air traffic controllers, who told the Polish pilots that weather conditions were too bad for landing but who also did not outright forbid the attempt.
The presidential delegation was traveling to attend ceremonies commemorating 20,000 Polish military officers and other prisoners of war killed during World War II by Josef Stalin's secret police.
The Russian conclusions on Poland's most devastating tragedy since the war threaten to renew tensions between the neighboring nations. Ties have been strained by memory of that war-era massacre and Moscow's domination of Poland during the communist era.
Both Tusk and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed hope Thursday that disagreements over the report would not set back recent reconciliation efforts.
Tusk said the crash had not damaged Polish-Russian relations, but warned that, "good relations with a chance for reconciliation can be only built on truth."
Lavrov described the crash as a "horrible tragedy" and said the report should not be viewed as a Russian investigation since the Interstate Aviation Committee is an international structure.
"I hope that no one would try to win political scores on that tragedy," he said Thursday in Moscow.
A recent visit to Poland by the Russian president underlined the warming ties and was hailed by both countries as itself a major step forward.
"I hope that the course agreed upon during President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Warsaw, the course that answers deep interests of both Russian and Polish peoples, will be continued and the agreements we have reached will be implemented," Lavrov said.
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Monika Scislowska in Warsaw and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.
