Press Review

The war on Iraq has overshadowed everything else. Front pages carry snapshots of soldiers in the desert, maps of Iraq and any available details of the military operation against Saddam Hussein. 280,000 troops are ready to march on Iraq, says Lidove Noviny. "The US predicts a short war," reports Mlada Fronta Dnes.

As regards the Czech position in this conflict, today's front pages reflect a certain schizophrenia. "The Czech government sides with the US," says a front page headline in Lidove Noviny. "The Czech government has expressed cautious support for the United States," reads the headline in Mlada Fronta Dnes. " The Czech Republic has no part in this military operation," says Pravo.

Pravo points out that the statements made by the Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla and Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda in the wake of Wednesday's cabinet session reveal a surprising discrepancy in the measure of Czech support for the US led military attack. "The foreign minister is in hot water for having expressed unreserved support for the US-led military alliance, describing it as an alliance of democratic states," says Pravo.

The paper claims that both Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla and President Vaclav Klaus were angered by the license the foreign minister took in speaking as he did. There was an angry exchange over the phone, Pravo says, quoting a source close to the president, which resulted in the deputy premier Pavel Rychetsky issuing a statement according to which the Czech Republic considered the use of force as "a last resort" and regretted the fact that it had not been sanctioned by the UN Security Council. The Czech Republic will not take an active part in the war because of the lack of a UN mandate, the statement said.

Hospodarske Noviny writes that the war with Iraq is a regrettable failure of diplomacy. The consequences of this failure on world scale are very grave, the paper says - damaged relations between Europe and the United States, a weakened United Nations and doubts over the role of NATO.

Away from the war, Lidove Noviny reports that as of today the interior ministry will make accessible to the public a list of people who actively and knowingly collaborated with the former communist secret police. The list of over 125,000 names is to appear on the ministry's web pages.

Lidove Noviny welcomes its publication, saying that this list should be more accurate and trustworthy than the unauthorized publication which appeared shortly after the 1989 revolution. Nevertheless, the head of the ministry's archive department Jan Frolik predicts a lot of court cases in connection with the decision to make it public.

The same paper reports on a bizarre court case in which a thirty six year old man claims that a Prague fertility clinic used his sperm without his permission to artificially inseminate his girlfriend. The woman later bore twins and the father now has to pay child support. The clinic has rejected the accusation saying that it only carried out such procedures on the grounds of written consent from both parties.

The father of the twins should think back and consider what he actually signed, the clinic's director said. The man says he agreed to give a sperm sample because his girlfriend told him the doctors needed it in order to ascertain the most suitable birth control method for her.