Polish, Russian houses to hold first-ever joint session

The Russian State Duma and its Polish counterpart will hold a joint session Thursday to discuss bilateral relations, the Itar-Tass news agency reported Wednesday.

According to chairman of State Duma's committee for international affairs Konstantin Kosachev, it will be the first such session for the two countries.

Among the issues to be discussed would be the recent deployment of U.S. Patriot missiles in Poland, said Kosachev.

The joint session of Polish and Russian lawmakers is to take place in Poland. On Friday, the Russian parliamentary delegation will meet with acting Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, who is also a chairman of the Polish Sejm.

Relations between Russia and Poland have been as cold as ice since the dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty bloc. They started to improve only recently, when Moscow formally recognized the Soviet role in the execution of thousands of Polish officers in the village of Katyn near Smolensk at the outbreak of World War II.

It was a bitter irony that the crash of a plane carrying Polish president Lech Kaczinski to a Katyn memorial helped to mend the relations further.

"We have nothing to hide about that tragedy," Kosachev said. "Russia has done everything it could for the investigation."

"All the details of the investigation must be published, not to let anybody say that Russia had plotted a conspiracy again or hid something," he said.

Source: Xinhua