Stoiber slams Benes decrees

Bavaria's state premier Edmund Stoiber has criticized the so called Benes decrees which formed a legal basis for the expulsion of over 2.5 million Sudeten Germans from post war Czechoslovakia. Speaking at a meeting of the Sudeten German Landsmanshaft, an association of expellees, Mr. Stoiber said the wrongs of the expulsion had not been righted and that Europe had missed a unique chance to resolve the sensitive issue on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII. The Czech Republic has refused to revoke the Benes decrees on the grounds that they are part of a larger post-war settlement package adopted as a result of the outcome of the war.