Gross for Czechs, Germans to jointly solve child prostitution

Interior Minister Stanislav Gross has said he wants to propose to his German counterpart Otto Schily that the two countries' police forces jointly tackle the problem of child prostitution in border areas. Mr Gross said that cooperation between the two countries' police forces will be based on the Czech-German treaty on mutual assistance in criminal matters. A media campaign around child prostitution along the Czech-German border was stirred up in October by information published in a report by the German non-government organisation Karo, suggesting child prostitution was rampant in border regions. Both Czech police and local authorities say the information about hundreds of children offered for prostitution in the area was exaggerated.