<p><br /> Poland paid an emotional tribute to President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria and 94 others killed in a plane crash a week ago in Russia.<br /> </p><p><br /> Up to 100,000 mourners, many clutching red-and-white national flags threaded with black ribbons, packed into the vast Pilsudski Square in central Warsaw to commemorate the victims of the country's most devastating accident since World War Two.<br /> </p><p><br /> "They all had their dreams and hopes for the future of their homeland. This is a serious test for us to understand those hopes well and take them into the future," Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who had been a political rival of Kaczynski's, told the crowd.<br /> </p><p><br /> "This is the most we can do for them. We are here to remember them. Poland is here to remember them. We will not forget," Tusk said.<br /> </p><p><br /> Behind him on the podium a tall, white cross rose up between two large black panels bearing the portraits of all the dead, whose names an actor read out one by one.<br /> </p><p><br /> Saturday's commemoration, which included a three-gun salute and a Roman Catholic requiem mass, came a day before the planned burial of Kaczynski and his wife in the crypt of Wawel cathedral in the ancient capital of Krakow in southern Poland.<br /> </p><p><br /> World leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama were scheduled to attend the Wawel funeral. But a huge volcanic ash cloud drifting across Europe from Iceland has closed Polish airports and it was unclear how many would manage to come.<br /> </p>
