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The attitude of the Czech Republic on the Iraq war will not affect relations with France and the EU, the Czech representative at the EU Convention, Josef Zieleniec, told journalists after a meeting with French European Affairs Minister Noelle Lenoir. Ms Lenoir held talks with Mr Zieleniec and Czech senate chairman Petr Pithart on Monday. They agreed that the disunity of views inside the EU on the solution to the Iraqi crisis posed no problem to European integration. French President Jacques Chirac recently sharply criticised EU candidates for their siding with the US over the Iraqi crisis. Ms Lenoir explained that Mr Chirac had been speaking very rigidly on behalf of EU enlargement lately because of public opinion in his country which does not wish any serious discrepancies in the widened family of nations.

European commissioner for enlargement, Guenter Verheugen, has expressed satisfaction with the position of the new Czech president Vaclav Klaus on the Sudeten German issue. He said Klaus's recent short statement was enough to bring to an end a lengthy dispute over the post-war expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia under the so-called Benes decrees. On Friday, the 64th anniversary of nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Mr. Klaus called for reconciliation and said both nazi terror and post-war expulsion of Sudeten Germans were unacceptable from today's point of view. Mr. Verheugen said without president Klaus's symbolic gesture to condemn the expulsions, there had been a danger that the European Parliament would adopt a partly negative resolution concerning the Czech Republic's EU accession.

The Czech Republic has expressed support for a fresh EU agreement concerning the Iraq crisis. Late on Thursday, 15 EU leaders agreed on the need to urgently address the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, offered to support the creation of representative government and urged the U.N. be given a "central role during and after the current crisis." Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla said the Czech Republic fully supported the idea of a UN-coordinated reconstruction of post-war Iraq.

At the same time, Mr Spidla said the Czech Republic would not react to a US call for governments worldwide to close down Iraqi embassies.

The Czech Republic deployed an anti-chemical unit in Kuwait but conditioned their engagement in the war without a UN mandate. Otherwise, the troops will only provide humanitarian aid if Iraq uses weapons of mass destruction.

The security situation in the Czech Republic has remained unchanged since the beginning of the war in Iraq, according to defence minister Jaroslav Tvrdik. He said there was no reason to adopt any other special measures and that crisis committees will meet less often than in the first days of the war. Several hundred soldiers have been assigned to assist the police in protecting strategic buildings and installations across the country as well as foreign embassies in Prague.