Quite a cross to bear
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Supporters of Poland's late President Lech Kaczynski are mounting a 24-hour guard on a large wooden cross in front of the presidential palace, after violent scenes yesterday as the authorities tried and failed to move the monument to a nearby church.
The wooden cross was erected outside the presidential residence after President Kaczynski and 95 others died in April's Smolensk plane crash. It served as a focal point for grieving Poles who came to bring flowers and candles.
With a new president Bronislaw Komorowski ready to move into the palace, the authorities decided it was time to move the cross from the street into the nearby Church of St Anna.
They had reckoned without Kaczynski's fervent, often strongly Catholic supporters who gathered in their hundreds yesterday to stop it being removed. The result was the bizarre scenes in central Warsaw yesterday as grannies, police, priests and boy scouts all clashed as attempts were made to take the cross.
For now things are quiet and the cross remains in place, but, as our Warsaw correspondent Lucasz Walewski says, no-one knows quite what will happen next.
