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03/25/2004
The upper house of the Czech Parliament, the Senate, has turned down a bill stating that former Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes did outstanding service to the state. In a discussion preceding the vote, the senators did not dispute the service that president Benes rendered in establishing an independent Czechoslovakia but many pointed to his disputable role during the period of the Munich crisis in 1938 and during the Communist coup d'etat in 1948. A similar law commemorating the first Czechoslovak president, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, was passed in 1930, and according to many senators was intended at the time to remain unique. Appeals to the Senate and the president to reject the bill have also been made by the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft who have long demanded the abolition of the decrees enacted by president Benes that expelled ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War Two. The senators made it clear, though, that their objections were not related to those appeals.
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03/25/2004
Former Czech President Vaclav Havel has been forced to cancel all engagements for the next 10 days after falling ill with respiratory problems, his spokeswoman said on Thursday. Mr Havel, who is 67, is resting at home and is under the care of his personal physician. His spokeswoman did not say how serious his illness was, but added that Mr Havel had cancelled his programme as a precaution based on his doctor's advice. The playwright, the most prominent symbol of the Czech Republic and its "Velvet Revolution", was elected president after the 1989 overthrow of the Soviet-backed regime. He left his seat at Prague castle last year.
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03/24/2004
Defence Ministry officials have said the four hundred-strong Czech-Slovak K-FOR contingent in Kosovo will most likely remain at full strength for an extra two months, in the wake of the recent unrest in the province. The Defence Ministry had planned to reduce the contingent. The Czech Army has received a request from K-FOR commanders not to reduce the number of troops serving in Kosovo.
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03/24/2004
The government has decided to sell its stakes in the Sokolovska uhelna and OKD coal mines, in what is the first major privatisation it has achieved in almost two years in office. Sokolovska uhelna is to be bought by Sokolovska tezebni, which is controlled by managers of its mines. The government's minority stake in the black coal company OKD is being bought by majority shareholder Karbon Invest.
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03/24/2004
Slovak citizens living in the Czech Republic will not be able to vote in the forthcoming presidential election in Slovakia. The Slovak Embassy says Slovak citizens will have to travel home to Slovakia if they want to take part in the election, the first round of which is held on April 3rd. Slovaks make up the largest minority in the Czech Republic, with almost 200,000 people claiming Slovak nationality in the 2001 census. However not all of them have Slovak citizenship, meaning not all of them are eligible to vote.
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03/24/2004
The mayor of the central Bohemian town of Kladno, Milan Volf, has been remanded in custody on charges of abuse of office. Prosecutors accuse Mr Volf, a member of the right-of-centre Civic Democrats, of illegally transferring 40 million crowns from the town's budget to Kladno's ice hockey club. He also stands accused of buying himself an expensive Audi car without seeking the council's permission. Mr Volf could face three years in prison if found guilty of abuse of office.
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03/24/2004
A branch of Komercni Banka in Prague's 10th district has been robbed for the third time in five years. A man robbed the bank on Wednesday, making away with hundreds of thousands of crowns after threatening staff with explosives. The bank was robbed in September last year.
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03/24/2004
President Vaclav Klaus has taken part in a ceremony in the Portuguese capital Lisbon naming a local street "Prague Avenue". President Klaus is on the second day of his state visit to Portugal.
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03/23/2004
Vaclav Klaus has criticised the chairman of the Christian Democrat group in the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering, for statements he made after the Czech president cancelled a meeting with him while he was on a visit to Prague. Mr Poettering told Czech and German journalists that such things would only happen in a dictatorship. Mr Klaus has written a letter of protest to Mr Poettering, the president's spokesman said on Tuesday. Mr Klaus, who is sceptical about European Union integration, said such behaviour would not give an encouraging signal to the Czech public or politicians as the country prepares for imminent accession to the Union.
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03/23/2004
Meanwhile, President Klaus - who is currently on an official visit to Portugal - has granted pardons to nine people, among them a young man who killed his aggressive and bullying father. The pardons have been granted on humanitarian grounds, the president's spokesman said on Tuesday. Mr Klaus has pardoned 16 people since being appointed just over a year ago. He had previously been critical of the number of pardons granted by his predecessor, Vaclav Havel.
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