Press Review

All the Czech newspapers today remember the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 last year and carry photographs taken immediately after the attacks. Most of the dailies also carry the views of Czech politicians and economists, answering the question of how last September's events in the United States and the anti-terrorist campaign that followed influenced developments in the Czech Republic.

Lidove noviny carries a statement by Czech president Vaclav Havel, who says the attacks on New York and Washington were attacks on the values our civilization is built upon. The necessity to protect these values helped to implement all the needed security measures, strategies and doctrines, but its most tangible result is the creation of a broad international anti-terrorist coalition.

President Havel is quoted by Lidove noviny as saying that a look back will show how much or how little success we have had since last year in efforts to better understand our civilization and on how we can live together in a globalized world. "Let's spend this day remembering all the innocent victims and let it also be a challenge for our self- reflection," the Czech president addressed the readers.

Mlada fronta Dnes writes that two of the victims who died in the World Trade Center were Czechs, both of whom emigrated to America from the former Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. The paper also carries an interview with a Czech man, who witnessed the terrorist attack right from the streets below, when guiding a group of Czech tourists in New York City.

Mr. Cerny told the paper he did not know at all what was going on, because the first police cars, firemen and ambulances appeared only 45 minutes after the catastrophe. Paradoxically, he learned all the details from his wife, when he phoned her at home in the Czech Republic. But this year, Mlada fronta Dnes writes, Mr. Cerny will not be guiding tourists in the United States - one year after the terrorist attacks, people from his home town, Chrudim, show no interest in travelling to New York.

Pravo writes that terrorists succeeded in changing the lives of all of us, at least because we all have pictures of the New York twin towers on fire in our minds, but otherwise no tangible results of the attacks can be traced in the Czech Republic. The only exception are armed vehicles in front of the former parliament building in the centre of Prague that now serves as the headquarters of the US-funded Radio Free Europe.

Political analyst Zdenek Zboril tells Pravo that there are two potential targets in Prague for a possible terrorist attack: one of them is the Radio Free Europe building, the other is Prague Castle, the seat of the president and a symbol of Czech statehood, because the main goal terrorists want to achieve is world-wide, immediate coverage of their attacks in the media.