News

Czech cardinal Miloslav Vlk has said that he is considering retirement in 2009, reported Mladá fronta Dnes on Saturday. Cardinal Vlk was released from hospital on Friday after collapsing from exhaustion two weeks ago. He is now expected to recover at Třeboň spa in Southern Bohemia. The head of the Czech Catholic Church was diagnosed with a heart problem last year, and underwent surgery to have a pacemaker fitted. He released a statement on his website this week to say that he thought it highly likely that he would be standing down from his function at the end of the year.

President Václav Klaus unveiled a monument to Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovakia’s second president, in the latter’s home town of Kožlany on Saturday. At the unveiling ceremony, Mr Klaus praised Beneš as a true democratic politician, who helped contribute to the building of what is now the Czech state. The statue was unveiled to mark the late Beneš’s 124th birthday. Beneš was president of Czechoslovakia between 1935-1938 and again between 1945-1948. He was also head of the Czech government in exile in London during the Second World War.

Following on from the theft of over 800 name plaques from the graves of Holocaust victims in North Bohemia, MPs are discussing whether to tighten laws on the sale and purchase of scrap metal. The parliamentary subcommittee for waste and raw materials is suggesting that individuals should no longer be able to approach scrap yards with items for sale – that only firms and town councils should be authorized to do so. Members of the committee suggest that this would lower the number of thefts of metallic objects, and ensure that something like what happened at the Terezín concentration camp cemetery never happens again. But critics of the plan, such as the head of the Green Party Martin Bursík, say that this would lead to dumping of old scrap metal in the country’s forests and in nature.

The US House of Representatives has approved cuts in defence spending despite a White House veto threat which – if passed - would impact US missile defence, including plans for a US radar base in the Czech Republic. The amount of the cuts: 700 million US dollars. The US administration has been negotiating for ten interceptor rockets to be housed in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic, to counter the threat of so-called rogue states; cuts in funding on missile defence, the White House has said, would jeopardise US security. It objected to the bill over a number of provisions, saying advisors would recommend President Bush use the presidential veto if they remained.

Just this week the Czech government announced it had agreed on a treaty on a US radar base being stationed in the country. The agreement is expected to be signed in late June/early July.