When Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek compares a base spreading on several hectares of forest land to the Marshall plan, it is his traditional momentary verbal aberration of the type of "Es kommt der Tag," but the instinct that stands behind the sentence is, fortunately, entirely precise: "we cannot rely only on the European community," Petr Kambersky writes in Hospodarske noviny today. He writes that is why it is good that foreign policy is not done by men who sometimes do not think of scoring an immediate success with voters. "Czechs usually see everything negative and when it comes to the crunch, they fill their pants," Topolanek said in January, Kambersky reminds. He says it is hard to say what Topolanek himself Czech PM Topolanek dismisses abuse of power allegations ...
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EU push to widen US visa waiver ... would do "if it came to the crunch," but it is good that he has been pulling the strategic treaty to the final as yet. The Czech government has failed to "sell" the radar to the people for one and a half years, and it has not actually even tried to, Milan Vodicka writes in Mlada fronta Dnes. He writes that the Czechs heard more those who could be more heard and the result is that 70 percent of the public is against the radar. This is "a crushing defeat even though public opinion polls do not decide about the base," Vodicka writes. He says the government did well only with respect to Russia when it made it radically clear that to retreat from the treaty would amount to the acknowledgement that Moscow can again play for the Czech Republic. Ties to the United States, a clear and irreversible involvement of the Czech Republic in the western sphere of influence, this is what the opposition blames Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek for, but it is precisely where the essence lies, Zbynek Petracek writes in Lidove noviny. "If we still have the self-preservation instinct, we should not reject the anchor that America offers us for a second time," Petracek writes, alluding to the rejection of the Marshall Plan in 1947 which Topolanek recalled after his meeting with U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "I would like it best if the European Union guaranteed the Czech Republic's security, but it is an economic colossus standing on dwarfish power legs," Jiri Hanak writes in Pravo. "It did not even know what to do about the war in Bosnia," he adds. The Czech government is cold about the Lisbon treaty that must not speak about an EU president or foreign or defence minister, and because these posts are not supported in many other member countries either, there is no other choice but to support the U.S. radar base, Hanak writes. The reason is that NATO without the United States is weak and the Czech Republic needs something firmer, Hanak writes. The Czech opposition Social Democrats (CSSD) have produced an almost Kafka-like absurdity when they invited a Russian general to their seat, in which Lenin spoke in 1912, and in the year of the 40th anniversary of then Czechoslovakia the Soviet army and on the day when the government signs a treaty with the United States, a symbol of Czech alliance and security in NATO, Zbynek Petracek writes in Lidove noviny. The genera was Yevgeni Buzhinski from the Defence Ministry who is in charge of negotiations on the radar base.
(Ceske Noviny)
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