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The Vatican is expecting an official statement from the Czech government on how it sees future relations between the Holy See and the Czech Republic, the spokesman for the Czech Bishops' Conference Daniel Herman said. In May, the lower house of Parliament failed to ratify an already signed agreement on bilateral relations, due to a large majority of votes against the document from the Social Democrats as well as the opposition Communists and Civic Democrats. The Vatican has officially voiced surprise at the rejection of the long-prepared document. But Czech deputies point out the agreement does not resolve controversial issues such as property restitutions and the funding of churches. According to deputy Prime Minister Petr Mares, the government will try to persuade the Chamber of Deputies to approve the agreement between the Czech Republic and the Vatican. With the Czech Republic being one of the last post-communist countries which has not passed an agreement regulating its relations with the Catholic Church, Mr Mares, said it is practically unthinkable not to have relations with the Vatican settled.

The Finance Ministry is not planning to reserve money in the state budget, for emergency cases when an already completed project is not covered by the EU, mainly for the reasons of having violated EU rules and regulations. According to Finance Ministry spokesperson, Eva Novakova, the ministry's decision was made to force individual Czech ministries into processing and approving only the best projects that will guarantee EU funding. Should a project fail to get EU support, it will be up to the ministry responsible to cover the costs involved.

The three Czech experts who arrived in Basra, southern Iraq, at the end of the week will begin work in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) on Saturday, a spokesman for the 7th Czech field hospital stationed in Basra has said. Engineers Frantisek Fuksa and Jaroslav Reif are experts on technical infrastructure, mainly focusing on energy and water. The former mayor of Hradec Kralove, east Bohemia, Martin Dvorak will help in the establishment of the local administration.

The Polish Catholic conservative party, the League of Polish Families (LPR), has said it fully supports the Czech Republic's stand on the Benes decrees, which sanctioned the expulsion and confiscation of property of millions of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia in the years following WWII. According to LPR Chairman Roman Giertych, the party will propose to pass a resolution expressing solidarity to the Czech Republic's decision not to abolish the decrees at the next session of the Sejm, the Polish parliament. The party's initiative follows calls from Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber for financial compensation for some Sudeten Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II.