The Polish government will take legal control this week of a field beside the Nazi Auschwitz death camp to try to end a dispute over crosses erected by right-wing Catholics, the Prime Minister, Mr Jerzy Buzek, said yesterday.
Mr Buzek said the government would annul a 30-year lease on the land held by a group with links to radical protesters planting crosses in defiance of their bishops and Jewish groups.
He did not specify if the government planned to remove the more than 100 crosses erected over the last month.
"Because this pertains to spiritual matters we have to move very carefully," Mr Buzek said. "It is very difficult."
Right-wing Catholics, backed by priests, have pledged to defend the crosses, which they say were put up to mark the execution of 152 Poles by German soldiers during the second World War.
Their campaign was inspired by plans to remove a large cross prayed under by Polish-born Pope John Paul II in 1979, but it has been accused of being politically motivated and of stoking anti-Semitism in this largely Catholic country.
The leader of the cross campaign pledged to oppose any moves to remove the crosses.
"I think they will have to drag me out by force," said Mr Kaszimierz Switon, who staged a 42-day hunger strike earlier this year. "I will not leave this place willingly, until I am sure all the crosses are to stay."
Jewish groups object to any religious symbols being placed near the camp, where 1.5 million people, about 90 per cent of them Jews, were murdered in the second World War, and say they have a semi-formal agreement with the Catholic Church on the issue.
The government's legal manoeuvre pivots on a clause in the lease that forbids disrespect for the church and has the support of the local Catholic bishop.
It is the first firm move to end an affair that has brought Polish-Jewish dialogue to a halt, split the Catholic Church in Poland, embarrassed the government internationally and left it vulnerable to attack from rightists in its own ranks.