New Bavarian PM calls for dialogue with Prague on Benes decrees

The new Bavarian Prime Minister Guenther Beckstein called for a dialogue with the Czech Republic on the post-war Benes decrees in his first address to representatives of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft in Munich on Saturday. Mr Beckstein called for the abolition of the decrees saying they were in contradiction with international law, natural law, human rights and European law.

The decrees, issued by former Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes, provided for the confiscation of property from collaborators, traitors, ethnic Germans and Hungarians, and the expulsion of ethnic Germans and Hungarians from Czechoslovakia. A large part of the deported ethnic Germans then found a new home in Bavaria. Mr Beckstein's predecessor Edmund Stoiber never paid an official visit to the Czech Republic during his 14 years in office.