Press Review

The United States-led war against Iraq continues to dominate the Czech press, with HOSPODARSKE NOVINY and PRAVO leading with Saddam Hussein's rejection of George Bush's ultimatum to leave the country. MLADA FRONTA DNES meanwhile asks a number of figures in public life where they stand on the issue.

Academic and recent presidential candidate Jan Sokol said it was in the Czech Republic's interest to prevent divisions between Europe and the US. Author Ludvik Vaculik, meanwhile, praises France and Germany for standing up to the Americans. For his part, Roman Catholic bishop Vaclav Maly expresses a fear that the war will be regarded in the Arab world as an attack on Islamic civilisation.

HOSPODARSKE NOVINY writes that many lawyers cast doubt on the legality of the United States' action, lacking as it does the backing of the United Nations. Vratislav Pechota of New York's Columbia university says the UN charter allows for war either in self-defence or with UN approval; neither of those conditions have been met in the current situation.

Frantisek Zboril of the law department at Olomouc's Palacky university describes the war as an act of aggression without any mandate whatsoever. UN resolution 1441 only concerns arms inspections, not other steps, he tells the daily.

Moving on to other issues making the headlines, several of Wednesday's dailies report on the case of a Czech married couple caught by German police trying to smuggle over 250 kilos of what PRAVO calls "quality hashish" into the country. The couple had hidden the drugs in a rented camper van, in which they were bound for the Netherlands, little knowing Czech police had been monitoring them for some time.

The Social Democrats are not planning to change their policy towards the Communist Party, PRAVO writes. Several key Social Democrats tell the daily that a 1995 resolution rejecting co-operation with the Communists at national level will not be abandoned at the Social Democrats' congress next month. Teaming up with the Communists would simply be political suicide for our party, says Culture Minister Pavel Dostal.

And finally a bizarre story in PRAVO of "tram rage" from the Moravian capital of Brno. In the early hours of Saturday morning a dispute arose when a young man refused demands from his fellow passengers to put his cigarette out. The result: a fight in which the man who had been smoking bit part of another man's ear off. The culprit, referred to by the daily as an "aggressive cannibal", was caught soon afterwards and could spend up to five years behind bars.