Poles' death penalty call angers EU

POLAND: Calls by senior Polish officials to restore the death penalty have drawn a sharp rebuke from the EU and the Council of Europe human rights body.

A senior aide to the conservative prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of president Lech, said Warsaw wanted the European Convention on Human Rights changed to allow the most serious offenders to be executed.

Minister without portfolio Przemyslaw Gosiewski said: "We want to launch a debate to make a real change to protocol six" of the convention, which forbids capital punishment in Europe, "or at least to make it say this is a matter for an individual country's legislation".

Earlier this week, the nationalist League of Polish Families (part of the coalition government) announced a Europe-wide drive to restore the death penalty.

"We are beginning a social campaign on a European scale, we want to collect half-a-million signatures from EU citizens for a petition demanding the death penalty for paedophile killers," said party vice-president Wojciech Wierzejski.

"The legal solutions for this disgusting crime in the EU are an anachronism and are simply not adequate. We are prepared for attacks from the EU, but we know we are right."

Andrzej Lepper, leader of another populist party and mem- ber of the ruling coalition, said he was "firmly in favour of the death penalty." The debate began last week with President Kaczynski telling Polish radio he had always backed capital punishment.

EU response was swift. "The death penalty is not compatible with European values," said Stefaan de Rynck, a spokesman for the European Commission.