Hungary mourns death of Polish president

Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom visited the Polish embassy in Budapest Saturday to voice his sympathies with the people of Poland over the death of their president in a plane crash.

"I feel certain that President (Lech) Kaczynski's legacy, his efforts in support of Hungarian-Polish friendship, will survive," said Solyom.

Polish president Kaczynski, First Lady Maria Kaczynska, and 95 other senior officials were killed when their Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft crashed while trying to land at Smolensk, Russia.

Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai sent a telegram of sympathy to President Kaczynski's brother Jaroslaw, Poland's former prime minister, and to current PM Donald Tusk.

He called the accident a tragedy that has shaken all of Hungarian society, given their traditional deep-reaching friendship with the Polish people. He called on all Hungarians to remember the tragedy at Sunday noon, with two minutes of silence.

Opposition Fidesz party leader Viktor Orban, predicted to win parliamentary elections on Sunday by a landslide, sent a telegram to Tusk, to Poland's Speaker of the House (the Sejm) Bronislaw Komorowski, and Senate President Bordan Borusewicz.

Hungary and Fidesz, lost many friends in that crash, he wrote, calling the deceased Polish president "a close friend and irreplaceable comrade-on-arms."

A group of civil organizations in Hungary have called for a candlelight vigil in Budapest in the evening, in memory of the dead.

Source:Xinhua