News

The Czech Republic has backed a new US missile defence plan meant to defend against possible threats from Iran or other states. The move came as US Vice President Joe Biden wrapped-up his visit to Central Europe on Friday, which included a meeting with Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer in the Czech capital. Following talks between the two, the Czech prime minister confirmed that the Czech Republic is ready to take part in the new project. The new programme will focus on short and medium-range rockets and replace an earlier proposal by the previous US administration to site a radar base in the Czech Republic and interceptor rockets in Poland.

In Prague on Friday, US Vice President Biden stressed that the new system will strengthen NATO’s defences against future missile threats. He confirmed that a high-level defence team will travel to Prague in November to discuss the terms of Czech participation.

The office of the Czech president has revealed that Václav Klaus is satisfied with a proposal by the Swedish EU presidency addressing his demands for modifications to the EU’s Lisbon treaty. In a statement released on Friday, the president’s office made clear the proposal met Mr Klaus’s expectations. In related news, the Czech EU Affairs Minister Stefan Fuele said, meanwhile, that the exemption Mr Klaus is seeking concerning the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, would be general - adding the words “Czech Republic” to opt-outs for Poland and Great Britain. Mr Klaus has sought the exemption to prevent any re-opening of property claims by ethnic Germans who were expelled from Czech soil after World War II; he has conditioned his signing of the Lisbon Treaty to the guarantee.

Czech police from the specialised unit against organised crime have charged 18 people for allegedly supporting and promoting groups suppressing human rights and freedoms. The 18 were out of a group of 24 people arrested by police on Wednesday on suspicion of ties to right-wing extremism. Two of the charged remain in custody. The suspects are thought to be connected to a white supremacist movement known as White Justice, which itself has connections to the neo-Nazi Narodní odpor. Others are suspected of having distributed supremacist material or of having organised illegal concerts. Police said on Friday they originally suspected a number of those detained of trying to prepare a terrorist attack, something which was not confirmed.

The Constitutional Court has rejected a claim by a Romany woman, Helena Ferenčíková, who had been seeking one million crowns in compensation for having undergone forced sterilisation in hospital. Mrs Ferenčíková had succeeded earlier in receiving an apology from the institution when regional and high courts ruled that medical personnel had not acted within the law. But the courts also found her claim was statute-barred after 2004 - a decision upheld by the Constitutional Court on Friday. The hospital maintained Mrs Ferenčíková had agreed with the sterilisation procedure, while she has said she was in labour at the time and was unaware exactly what she was agreeing to.