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The deputy chairman of the main opposition Civic Democrats, Petr Necas, told Czech Radio's radiozurnal programme on Monday that his party is ready to form a "broad consensus of political forces" to push for holding early parliamentary elections, now scheduled for 2006. The centre-right Civic Democrats won 18 of 27 seats being contested for the Czech Senate this month while the ruling Social Democrats failed to pick up a single seat. Commenting on these results, Mr Necas said the "democratic legitimacy" of the Social Democrat-led government was "gradually disappearing". This year, the centre-right Civic Democrats defeated the left-leaning Social Democrats in regional Czech elections and in the country's first elections to the European Parliament.

A Prague district court on Monday sentenced 14 alleged members of a criminal gang for trafficking in human beings. The leader of the gang, a Chechen named Ivas Muzavev, was given a four-year prison term and fined 400,000 crowns. Other members of the gang, which included several Armenians and eastern European nationals and employed Czechs drivers, received suspended sentences or at most three-year prison terms as well as fines. Police said the gang had illegally transported at least 1,500 people across Czech territory from August 2002 until the ring was broken up in October last year. The gang initially focused on transporting people from India and its neighbouring countries but had begun to specialise in the former Soviet republics.

The Health Minister, Social Democrat Milada Emmerova has said that the leadership of the party discussed the possibility of early general elections at its Saturday meeting. Speaking in a televised debate on Sunday, Minister Emmerova added that early elections were not the Social Democrats' first option but merely one of the possible alternatives. The Social Democrats experienced election defeats in June in the European elections, last weekend in the elections to the regional assemblies and in this weekend's second round of Senate elections, where no Social Democrat candidate was elected.

The senior opposition Civic Democrats won all three of the elections and the junior opposition Communist Party finished second, ahead of the governing Social Democrats.

A special commission which was set up to prevent mass immigration of Roma from neighbouring Slovakia will cease to exist, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry has said. He added that the fears of a mass influx of Roma economic migrants, following the cuts in social benefits in Slovakia and EU accession, have not materialised. In recent years, whole families moved over to live with their relatives in the Czech Republic hoping to improve their living standard. According to the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry the immigration only worsened the living conditions of the Czech Roma population as they now live in overcrowded flats, pay extra expenses, and crime, illegal money-lending and illegal employment are on the rise in the community.