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Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda has indicated he wants the National Security Office to increase the speed of vetting of candidates become members of the permanent Czech mission to the European Union. On Wednesday he requested the government give this task to the head of the National Security Office Tomas Kadlec. In Mr Svoboda's view vetting is clearly necessary with regards to the activities of diplomatic and non-diplomatic personnel, but after the government meeting on Wednesday he expressed dismay that 530 cases at the Foreign Ministry remain incomplete, 120 of those requests dating back to1999. Mr Svoboda wants the government to set specific deadlines for the vetting process. He stressed the importance of the procedure for completing the European agenda, as well as for the setting of Czech representation in Brussels.

The Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla has expressed support for a common European defense and foreign policy. Addressing an audience at the Johan Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt Mr. Spidla said that while Europe had become an economic power, foreign policy and defense wise it was a midget. A European defense force should help to restore balance within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Czech Prime Minister said. He appealed for European unity pointing out that in the present day no European country was in a position to defend its interests alone.

Czech politicians, WWII veterans and Prague citizens, on Monday, gathered outside the Czech Radio building to commemorate the 1945 Prague Uprising. The commemorative ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla, deputy chairman of the Senate Premysl Sobotka, and the deputy mayor of Prague Petr Hulinsky, who laid wreaths in front of the Czech Radio Building and paid homage to the memory of those who lost their lives. The Prague Uprising began on May 5th, 1945 with a call to arms, broadcast on the radio. Around 30,000 people spontaneously joined the freedom fighters in the Czech capital.

Czech officials are investigating what may be the country's fifth case of mad-cow disease. A six-year-old milk cow on a farm in the south Moravian town of Dolni Lazany tested positive for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE, after she was slaughtered on April 29. According to an Agriculture Ministry official, the infection was found by two rapid tests and the ministry is waiting for a confirmation by the State Veterinary Authority which should come on Tuesday or Wednesday. Four cows of similar age in the 70-strong herd and one descendant of the infected cow will be slaughtered as a precautionary measure. Among the country's previous BSE cases, two were reported last year and two in 2000.

Scientists have linked BSE to the human brain-wasting variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, which has killed about 100 people in western Europe in the past decade. No proven case of the human form of the disease has been recorded in the Czech Republic. BSE, believed to originate from cattle feed, has also been found in several animals in neighbouring Poland and Slovakia.