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The Italian internet provider Tiscali has been allowed to join a consortium bidding for a 51.1 percent state-held stake in dominant Czech land-line operator Cesky Telecom, a ministerial privatisation commission announced on Friday. Tiscali will join the Czech-Slovak PPF/J and T/InWay consortium, one of five bidders for the state's stake. The government launched a tender for Cesky Telecom last December and said financial investors would not be allowed to bid directly but would have to team up with telecoms companies.

President Klaus has urged a speedy resolution of the Czech government crisis. On Thursday he held a series of high level consultations with political leaders in an effort to help break the deadlock. A reconciliation attempt between the two feuding parties in government broke down on Wednesday, with both sides reiterating their earlier positions. The Prime Minister Stanislav Gross said that if the Christian Democrats could not accept him as head of Cabinet their ministers should resign from office. Christian Democrat leader Miroslav Kalousek said the Prime Minister himself should resign in the wake of a scandal over his private finances which he said was discrediting the entire Czech Cabinet. The third party in the governing coalition, the Freedom Union has distanced itself from the feud.

The leader of the opposition Civic Democratic Party Mirek Topolanek, who also conferred with the President, said the Civic Democrats would only support a solution leading to early elections. Earlier today the party rejected speculation that it would support a minority Social Democrat government in return for the approval of a majority -first-past the post - electoral system which it is known to favour. The opposition Civic Democrats say that whatever the outcome of the government crisis, barring early elections, the government should ask for a vote of confidence in Parliament. Senior party member Vlastimil Tlusty said that if the government itself failed to act in this respect, the Civic Democrats would not hesitate to initiate a no-confidence vote. In a no-confidence vote 101 of the 200 deputies in the lower house would have to vote against the government to bring it down. The governing coalition now has a slim 101 vote majority in Parliament.

Christian Democrat leader Miroslav Kalousek has made public the name of the man from whom he borrowed money to build his home in Bechyne, south Bohemia in 1997. The loan was allegedly provided by his brother in law, a businessman who was murdered several years later. Kalousek said that he was hesitant to make the information public for fear of the impact this could have on his family but that he now felt it was important to make his financial affairs transparent.