Havel hits back at Paroubek over opinion piece

Former Czech president Václav Havel has taken issue with comments made by Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek in the Czech daily Právo. In an opinion piece in the daily on Friday, Mr Paroubek suggested that Havel (along with others such as former prime minister Mirek Topolánek) “longed for a world of Iron Curtains” – a response to Mr Havel’s position on the US radar base cancelled by the Obama administration. Mr Havel responded on Saturday by writing in Právo that Mr Paroubek was lying. He wrote that unlike the Social Democrat leader, he had done all that was in his power to help bring down the Iron Curtain. In roughly two months, the Czechs will mark the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which toppled the Communist system in Czechoslovakia, and lifted the playwright and former dissident Václav Havel to power.