Newpapers surveyed: Lidove noviny, Rude pravo, Svobodne slovo, Lidova demokracie, Cesky denik, Mlada fronta Dnes, Prace, Telegraf

In alphabetical order:

CESKY DENIK (right-wing, strongly anti-Communist). Headline news: Jan Ruml, Minister of the Interior (ODS - leading party in the coalition government) announced his intention to propose unilateral measures from the Czech side to protect the Czecho-Slovak border (the main reason being the influx of East-European refugees over the non-existent border, especially in the context of the new citizenship law in Germany).

LIDOVA DEMOKRACIE (Catholic) devotes the first page to continuing disagreement between the secular (ODS, ODA) parties of the ruling coalition and the Christian Democrats (KDS, KDU) over the "restitution" - i.e., return of property confiscated by the Communist governments - to the churches, in particular to the Catholic church. Much of the property now belongs to the cities and villages; while the Christian parties insist that the property should be returned without exceptions, the ODS proposed on the meeting discussed by LD to leave it up to the city councils themselves which part of the property they will return to the church.

LIDOVE NOVINY (liberal, formerly dissident underground paper). Headline news: same as LD. "Self-criticism", an ironic commentary by J.Vancura, returns to yesterday's surprising verdict by a court which delared J.Kral, the director of a bank, Agrobanka, innocent of corruption charges. J.Kral was accused of attempted corruption last year by then Premier Petr Pithart, who testified in court that Kral had offered him 1,000,000 Czech crowns. At the trial, both written evidence and oral testimonies were produced; these were obviously dismissed and Pithart, who is known for his scrupulous honesty, was considered an untrustworthy witness, writes Vancura. "I have thought there was at least one politician in our country who had been exposed to the temptation of corruption and not only resisted, but referred the offender to a court. Now I see there was no such case, and all the talk about corruption is just wishful thinking of pessimists or pathologically envious people. I do not dare to assume, of course, that other

politicians accept bribes or refuse them without referring them to the courts, thus violating the law."

MLADA FRONTA DNES (popular, without political affiliation). Headline news includes a report on the condition of the environment in the Czech Republic. According to the Ministry of Environmental Affairs, the document "should dispel widespread rumors that the condition of our environment is deteriorating". MFD, however, quotes also the Green Party as saying that the decrease of SO2 release into the atmosphere by 11% and CO2 release by 6% is simply the result of a (much larger) decrease in industrial production, not of tougher environmental policy.

PRACE (trade-unionist) devotes the first page to the trial of Communist ex-ministers Ler and Zak, accused of sending millions of dollars abroad in aid to Communist movements (thus violating even the then existing laws about export of currency). The trial ended with a suspended sentence.

RUDE PRAVO (left-wing, ex-Communist). Headline story: "The Coalition Wants to Negotiate With Sudeten Germans". (The overwhelmingly pro-Nazi German minority in Czechoslovakia was instrumental in the breakup of the country in 1938; after the war, the whole minority was deported, often with considerable and unjustifiable brutality,

to Germany. The new Bavarian Premier, Mr.Stoiper, gave recently support to the "Sudeten Germans" claims for recompensation by the Czech Government, which provoked strong feelings especially among Czech Socialists and Communists, who are traditionally anti-German.) The article in Rude Pravo informs that members of the ruling coalition are prepared to negotiate with the Sudeten Germans despite the assurances the Government as such considers only the Federal Government of Germany as its partner.

SVOBODNE SLOVO (centrist, ex-Socialist), on the contrary, considers the assurance of Premier Vaclav Klaus to deal only with the German Government as a "decisive word" in "the protection of our interests as well as of the interests of civil society in Europe".

TELEGRAF (right-wing, secular, close to ODS and Premier Klaus). Title page devoted to coalition negotiations about church property. The large section devoted to foreign policy includes also a sarcastic commentary on the sagging popularity of U.S.President Clinton, and an enthusiastic report about the triumph of secular parties in the democratic elections in Yemen.

RESPEKT (independent weekly with radical stands esp. on human-rights issues) gives a full page to the last Bosnian peace plan under the title "Europe has agreed with genocide". The author, Czecho-English journalist B.Kuras, quotes U.S.Sen.D.P.Moynihan as saying: "We have legitimized genocide". The plan has entrusted the responsibility for the protection of remaining Muslims in reservations to Milosevic, writes Kuras. "Western Europe has shown openly that it is a closed, exclusive club of the wealthy, who do not want to be disturbed. For Central Europeans the Bosnian lesson is a sobering experience: they have to wake up from the dream that the West is eager to accept the post-Communist nations in its family".

Another article ("Dr.Dolecek removed the portrait of Havel from his wall") informs about the new Czecho-Serbian Foundation, created in Ostrava by Dr Dolecek, a Czech of Serbian origin. The foundation claims the sanctions against Serbia are "brutal and unjustified", because "the civil war was caused by Germany"; the founders were pleasantly surprised, however, by the recent "wise" (i.e., pro-Serb) statements of Prime Minister Klaus.

RESPEKT also publishes the protest of Amnesty International and Greenpeace against the murder of two Greenepeace activists, Arnaldo Delcidio Ferreira and Paulo Cesar Vinha, in Brazil.