Polish PM says no plans to restore death penalty

WARSAW, Aug 4 (Reuters) Poland's president was speaking as a private citizen when said he supported the death penalty, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said today, not as an official making a formal proposal.

President Lech Kaczynski, the prime minister's twin brother, told Polish radio last week the European Union should reconsider its ban on capital punishment, drawing a sharp rebuke from Brussels.

Rene van der Linden, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said Kaczynski had made a ''direct attack'' on common European values and he asked the president to retract his proposal in an open letter.

The Prime Minister said his brother had not made a proposal, but merely expressed an opinion.

''It was his private opinion,'' he told a news conference. ''We are not aiming to make any such a proposal right now.'' All 15 the EU's older member states abolished capital punishment in the 1960s. New members that joined in 2004 have had to scrap it as a condition of membership.

President Kaczynski told Polish radio the EU would come to see that the death penalty, which Poland abolished soon after the fall of communism in 1989, was justified for murder.

The Kaczynskis won power last year promising a tough stance against corruption and crime in the biggest ex-communist EU member.

Their traditionalist rhetoric has sparked concerns they will drive Poland away from the European mainstream.

Reuters VJ GC0210