US President Barack Obama will attend the funeral of his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski, killed in an air crash in western Russia on Saturday.

美国总统奥巴马将参加波兰总统卡钦斯基的葬礼，卡钦斯基所乘坐的专机上周六在俄罗斯西部坠毁。

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The coffins of Poland's first couple are lying in state in Warsaw

The leaders of Russia, France and Germany are also due to attend the burial in the city of Krakow on Sunday.

Mr Kaczynski and his wife Maria will be buried in a crypt（地穴） close to iconic Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski - a decision that has aroused some protest.

Polish officials say elections for a new president will be held in June.

In a parliamentary document they wrote that there were "two possible dates" for the election - 13 or 20 June.

Poland's acting³（代理的，装腔作势的） President, Bronislaw Komorowski, is expected to name the exact date after consulting（咨询，商议） political parties.

Before the crash, Mr Komorowski, the parliamentary speaker, was expected to run against the late president as the official candidate of Prime Minister Donald Tusk's governing Civic⁴ Platform Party.

There is speculation⁵（推测，思索） that Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of Lech Kaczynski, may now stand in the late president's place.

Krakow funerals

The bodies of the presidential couple have been lying in state together at the presidential palace in Warsaw since the remains⁶ of the first lady arrived from Moscow on Tuesday, a few days after her husband's repatriation⁷（遣送回国） .

A Polish air force band greeted her coffin¹（棺材） as it arrived back in Warsaw. Covered in a white and red Polish flag, the coffin was met by the president and the first lady's daughter, Marta, who kneeled down to touch it.

Andre Ladinski, a political commentator⁸, told the BBC that while President Kaczynski was a divisive politician, the first lady was universally admired.

"She was very much liked, loved by people, people really warmed up to her, I would say that not many politicians' wives were so popular as she was," he said.

The couple were among 96 people - many of them senior figures - aboard a Polish government jet that crashed in heavy fog while trying to land in the Smolensk region of Russia.

They had been travelling to attend a memorial service for Polish military officers and others killed en masse（全体地，一同地） by Stalin's secret police at Katyn in 1940.

Polish TV has been broadcasting live images of mourners walking by the closed coffins of the first couple at the presidential palace.

Krakow's Archbishop, Stanislaw Dziwisz, announced that the funeral would begin at 1400 (1200 GMT) on Sunday in the city's medieval Wawel Cathedral, the main burial site of Polish monarchs⁹（君主） since the 14th Century and more recent heroes including Josef Pilsudski, who led Poland after independence from Russia in the early part of the last century.

The last Polish leader killed in office, Gen Wladyslaw Sikorski, who died in an air crash in 1943, is also interred¹⁰（埋，葬） there.

Some Poles criticised the decision to bury Mr Kaczynski, who was a divisive political figure in his lifetime, in the cathedral.

Hundreds of people staged a protest in front of the archbishop's residence（住宅，住处） on Tuesday evening, carrying banners reading: "Not Krakow, not Wawel", and "Are you sure he is the equal of kings?"