Polish Minister Criticizes Russia

Poland's foreign minister sharply criticized Russia on Wednesday for withholding documents that could shed light on the 1940 massacre of 21,000 Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviet secret police. "I can only imagine that there is only one reason for it — disgrace and shame," Poland's PAP news agency quoted Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld as saying in the southern city of Krakow. Poland's state-run National Remembrance Institute is investigating the World War II-era killings in the Katyn forest and at other sites after a Russian investigation into the massacre failed to produce the names of more perpetrators. To carry out its work, the institute has asked Moscow to hand over its files on the massacre. But last week, the Russian Embassy in Warsaw told Polish prosecutors that Moscow would hand over only 67 of the more than 100 files, saying the rest are protected by "a secrecy clause," said Pawel Karolak, an institute official. Rotfeld said Poland would not accept Russia's decision and suggested he felt Moscow has something to hide, PAP reported.