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The Defence Minister Vlasta Parkanova has stated that the government has now approved the deployment of the 6th field hospital to Afghanistan. The unit will operate at Kabul airport. If both houses of parliament approve the mission, hospital personnel will leave for Afghanistan in March. The sending of the hospital unit with around 70 personnel for one year will cost 150 million crowns (the equivalent of around 7 million US dollars) to be covered by the Defence Ministry budget. The ministry says that NATO could defray a part of the costs. The mission to Afghanistan was requested by NATO last year. The unit has been deployed in that country before and has also operated in Iraq.

Two rebel Social Democrat deputies - Milos Melcak and Michal Pohanka - have confirmed that they will allow the centre right government to win Friday's confidence vote by absenting themselves from the vote. The two men appeared at a press conference given by Prime Minister Topolanek and said that their main motive was to end the country' prolonged political agony. The prime minister said that he had promised to consult them both on any major reform bills presented to Parliament. Due to the even division of power in the lower house the centre-right cabinet needs support from at least one left-wing deputy in order to survive Friday's confidence vote.

The speaker of the lower house, Social Democrat MP Miloslav Vlcek says he may postpone his resignation, originally planned for Wednesday, until after Friday's confidence vote. The Social Democrats announced last week they wanted Mr. Vlcek's resignation and the election of a new speaker to be put on the agenda of Wednesday's session of the lower house. They proposed Mr. Vlcek's re-election. The right wing parties have criticized the move saying that the Social Democrats were trying to get the upper hand in the lower house in view of a possible third attempt at forming a government should the centre-right government fail to win Friday's confidence vote. The speaker of the house has the right to nominate the prime minister designate in a third attempt to form a government.

According to a poll just out, 59 percent of Czechs disapprove of the scandal surrounding the prime minister's private life. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they did not like the fact that the prime minister had built his election campaign around family-values, at a time when he already had a mistress. Only 15 percent said this was normal election campaign strategy. The prime minister recently announced he was leaving his wife for his mistress, who is expecting a baby.