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The biggest Czech steel producer, Mittal Steel Ostrava, and a subsidiary seek to cut around 1,000 posts from their combined workforce of 9,280, the group said Friday. An incentives package that encourages workers to quit the parent company and its Vysoke Pece Ostrava subsidiary is part of an ongoing restructuring aimed at increasing productivity at Mittal Steel's Czech operations, it added. The company's personnel manager Jiri Gwozdz said the company has still not achieved the productivity of Western European companies or even the European average. Mittal Steel Ostrava is 70.67 percent owned by Netherlands-based Mittal Steel, the biggest steel producer worldwide, while the remainder is held by the Czech government.

President Vaclav Klaus has set the date for the upcoming Senate and regional elections, which will be held on October 20 - 21, 2006. Citizens will vote on 27 senatorial posts, a portion which equals one third of the upper house. Senators are voted in for a term of six years, and one-third of Senate seats come up for re-election every two years. The upper house has a total of 81 seats and holds the power to veto laws and return them to the lower house for further amendments. Civic Democratic Party candidates won the most support in the last Senate election, which took place in 2004. The senators elected in October 2006 will also take part in the next presidential vote, which will be in 2008.

Representatives of the Organic and Biochemistry Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the American biopharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences, have signed an agreement on research cooperation. A new research center will be established in Prague, to which Gilead Sciences will contribute 1.1 million dollars (25 million Czech crowns) annually. The new research center will he headed by Czech scientist Antonin Holy and his team, who are also responsible for developing what is considered the best medicine for the treatment of AIDS. The agreement between the Czech scientific team and Gilead Sciences also includes financing of any approved drug patents.

President Klaus is to meet with the leaders of all five parliamentary parties in the course of Thursday and Friday to try to resolve the post-election stalemate. Since June's inconclusive general elections, which gave the right and left block 100 seats each in the lower house, the leaders of the two biggest parties - the centre right Civic Democrats and the Social Democrats - have been arguing over what kind of coalition government should be formed.

The leader of the Social Democrats Jiri Paroubek has refused to support a centre right coalition and earlier this week he gave a lukewarm response to an offer to join the three parties in a rainbow coalition. Mr. Paroubek said he preferred to discuss other alternatives such as a grand coalition or a minority Civic Democrat government with tacit support from the Social Democrats. These scenarios were in turn rejected by Civic Democratic Party leader Mirek Topolanek, whose party won the elections but lacks a majority in parliament.

It is not clear whether the lower house will make another attempt to elect a new leadership on Friday. The Social Democrats have refused to put forward a candidate for the post of speaker and it seems there may not be anyone in the running.

In a related development, the leader of the Green Party Martin Bursik has accused the leader of the Social Democrats Jiri Paroubek of trying to win over some Green Party deputies in order to gain the upper hand in the lower house. Mr. Bursik did not name any names but said he was aware of what was going on and wanted the public to know what was happening.