News

The government is to discuss the verdict of the arbitration case in which the Czech Republic has been ordered to pay the US-based company CME over 10 billion crowns, or around 350 million US dollars, for failing to protect CME's investment in the Nova television station. The Finance Ministry said on Saturday it was preparing a variety of possible reactions to the verdict, which it would put before the cabinet on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting has been coming under intense pressure for the way it has handled the TV Nova affair. The governing Social Democrats' deputies group has called for the council's dismissal.

In 1999 Czech media magnate Vladimir Zelezny, whose company owned Nova's broadcast licence, squeezed investor CME out of the station before relaunching it himself. Mr Zelezny, who was elected to the Senate last year, is being investigated by Czech police on a number of fraud charges.

A protest march against a possible war against Iraq has passed both the British and United States' embassies in Prague. Thousands of people took part in Sunday's anti-war demonstration, which was the second in the city in the last week. A day earlier around fifty people demonstrated in Prague against Czech accession to the European Union.

President Vaclav Klaus has said the Czech Republic and its neighbours must put the post-World War II expulsion of Czechoslovakia's German minority behind them. Speaking on the 64th anniversary of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Mr Klaus said that while the past could not be changed, the events of that era were "unacceptable" from the modern perspective. After the war some three million Sudeten Germans were forced to leave the country and were stripped of their property.

Social Democrat Deputy Milan Urban has been proposed by the prime minister to replace outgoing Jiri Rusnok as the country's new Trade and Industry minister. Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla sacked Mr Rusnok on Thursday, just two days after the coalition government won a vote of confidence in parliament. Mr Rusnok's dismissal must now be approved by the country's president Vaclav Klaus. Meanwhile, a government spokeswoman said on Friday that Mr Rusnok's removal had nothing to do with a rebellion by some Social Democrat deputies in recent presidential elections, which allowed Mr Klaus to win the post. Other observers, however, point out Mr Rusnok was a key ally of Mr Spidla's predecessor, Milos Zeman. They say by sacking Mr Rusnok the prime minister has sent a clear message to opponents within his own Social Democrat party. Providing the president approves Jiri Rusnok's dismissal, Milan Urban will take his new post in government as of next week.