( RIA Novosti ) - No nation has the right to tell Poland how to name streets or what monuments to unveil in Polish cities, the country's prime minister said Tuesday.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski hailed Brussels' position that the removal of a Soviet WWII memorial from central Tallinn late April, which sparked protests in the Estonian capital and Moscow, was Estonia's domestic affair.
"It is Estonia's sovereign right to decide which monuments to have, as it is Poland's," Kaczynski said.
Poland's Culture Ministry has been drafting a bill for several months that would allow the dismantlement of monuments to Communism and Nazism.
Minister Kazimierz Ujazdowski said Monday that the bill was aimed at removing monuments dedicated to foreign powers as "alien Polish tradition", but added that it was not targeted against Russia.
"Concerns voiced by critics of the draft law are groundless," Ujazdowski said, adding that mausoleums and cemeteries where soldiers killed in Poland during WWII were buried would not be removed.
Some 600,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in Poland liberating the country from the Nazis during WWII.
Marek Kuchcinski, head of the parliamentary faction of Poland's ruling conservative party Law and Justice which is also working on a similar bill, said a bitter dispute over the removal of a Soviet-era war memorial between Russia and Estonia would not stop the "decommunization of Poland."
Russia's parliamentary speaker said Monday Russian lawmakers would refer Moscow's unease about the removal of a Soviet-era war memorial in Estonia and similar plans by other European states to PACE.
"The re-assessment of the outcome of World War II is an issue we, members of the State Duma, will propose for discussions at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe," Boris Gryzlov said.
The controversial relocation sparked protests among members of Estonia's Russian community in Tallinn, where one Russian national was killed and more than a hundred injured in clashes with police. The move also angered officials in Moscow, who described it as an act of blasphemy.
Russia earlier also complained about the closure by Polish authorities of a Russian exhibition at the Auschwitz death camp memorial.