Lower house approves foreign missions for 2009

The lower house of Parliament has approved the Czech Republic’s foreign missions for 2009. Should the bill have been rejected, all Czech servicemen on missions abroad would have had to have been recalled. Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek’s cabinet tried and failed to have a draft of the army’s foreign missions approved in December, but with the opposition Social Democrats against plans to raise the number of troops in Afghanistan, the proposals were thrown out. After hours of heated debate on Wednesday, four Social Democrat MPs voted with the government to pass the bill. The Czech Republic will now have a total of 480 soldiers based in Afghanistan and 430 stationed in Kosovo.