Press Review

The main stories in today's papers are the possibility of Czech Army units joining US forces in a war against Iraq, the rising level of unemployment in the Czech Republic and the case of the Social Democratic presidential candidate Jaroslav Bures, who admitted he caused the death of a pedestrian twenty years ago.

MLADA FRONTA DNES reports that the level of unemployment in the Czech Republic has reached a record high. At the end of last year there were more than half a million jobless people, that is almost ten percent of the working population. The paper writes that this month the figure is likely to exceed ten percent for the first time ever, with little chance of improvement at least in the first half of the year.

"To die for a good cause is a beautiful death," reads a headline in PRAVO, introducing a long interview with Defence Minister Jaroslav Tvrdik, concerning the participation of Czech anti-chemical experts in a possible war in Iraq. The minister, who is a former Czech army lieutenant colonel, speaks about the role of soldiers, which according to him is to defend the ideals of the state if they are threatened.

"We are not in a situation to come up with any diplomatic approaches to the conflict. We have only two options: either yes or no, there is no third way," Minister Tvrdik says in PRAVO. He also says there will be no new Security Council resolution and that the United Nations does not provide an answer to the risks and threats in the post-September 11 world in terms of security.

PRAVO also reports on the European emergency phone number 112, which was introduced on January 1 in the Czech Republic on top of other four existing emergency numbers. The paper says that the new number is causing confusion and seems so far as a waste of money. The data received at the call-centre is not processed properly and individual emergency services, such as ambulance or police receive it late.

Health emergency workers complain that they have no direct contact with the callers and they cannot provide basic advice over the phone on how to help the patient before an ambulance arrives. The 112 line was a requirement of the European Union and above all it is supposed to help foreigners visiting the country but the language skills of the call-centre are far from perfect, PRAVO says.

MLADA FRONTA DNES reports on last night's farewell dinner given by President Havel and his wife Dagmar at the presidential chateau at Lany. The couple had invited over seventy current and former politicians, many of whom, as MLADA FRONTA DNES comments, would otherwise never willingly sit down at one table.

LIDOVE NOVINY writes that Czech far-right activists are planning to march through the historical Jewish Quarter in Prague on Saturday claiming they want to remember "Holocaust victims". The paper quotes a Czech anarchist as saying the Czech Anarchist Federation is planning a counter demonstration aiming to stop the neo-nazi crowd from entering the Jewish Quarter.