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President Vaclav Klaus said on Tuesday that the situation around Jiri Cunek was becoming untenable and must be resolved in one way or another. "Either Mr. Cunek is guilty and must leave the Cabinet or the police have made a grave error and must accept responsibility for it," the president said on a visit to Hradec Kralove. President Klaus said that above all the crisis must not be allowed to blow over. He said that if it came to light that the deputy prime minister had been accused unjustly police heads should roll. Mr. Cunek is accused of having accepted a half a million crown bribe while he was still mayor of Vsetin five years ago. He insists that he is innocent of any wrongdoing.

The 2007 Frantisek Kriegel Award for civic courage has gone to Ondrej Cakl for his work in monitoring right-wing extremism in the Czech Republic. Ondrej Cakl who works for the Tolerance and Civic Society organization based in Prague has monitored right wing extremism in the country since the 1990s at the risk of his own safety. His work has won the respect of the media and experts on political extremism. The Frantisek Kriegel Award, established in Stockholm, is presented annually by the Charter 77 Foundation. The award bears the name of Charter 77 signatory Frantisek Kriegel, who was the only Czechoslovak political leader who refused to sign Moscow's humiliating dictate after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August of 1968.

Social Democrat chairman and former Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek says if the government-proposed package of fiscal reforms fails a vote in parliament it will not necessarily lead to early elections. Speaking in a live debate on Czech Television on Monday, Mr Paroubek said it was not appropriate for the government to speak about early elections only months after it received confidence. He also pointed out that opinion polls do not suggest the ruling Civic Democrats would win if early elections were held this autumn. The current centre-right coalition cabinet had pledged to step down if it fails to push the reforms through.

Czech Roma rights activists have decided to file a lawsuit against Deputy Prime Minister and Christian Democrat leader Jiri Cunek over his comments regarding the Roma community. They say his statements might amount to inciting hatred against the ethnic group. In a recent interview for the popular tabloid Blesk, Mr Cunek said that in order to be entitled to state subsidies like Romanies, other people would need to get a suntan, behave in a disorderly way and light fires on town squares before politicians would regard them as badly off.

Roma rights activists are calling for Mr Cunek's departure from government. They are planning to stage a protest outside the government headquarters in Prague on Wednesday.