SURVEY OF CZECH PRESS, 12-6-1993, by Jan Jarab

Daily newspapers surveyed (in alphabetical order): Cesky denik, Lidova demokracie, Lidove noviny, Mlada fronta Dnes, Prace, Rude pravo, Svobodne slovo, Telegraf.

CESKY DENIK (right-wing) discloses in one of its headlines that Defence Minister Antonin Baudys (KDU - Christian Democratic Union) is a member of the board of Meopta Prerov, a company which produces military equipment and is entitled by the defence ministry to supply the Czech Army. It is also involved in Czech military exports.

LIDOVA DEMOKRACIE (Catholic). Headline: "No Interest in Czech Uranium". Due to the decrease of uranium prices worldwide, the Czech uranium mines have had to stop their once very substantial exports to Russia. After the breakup of the federation, Slovakia stopped buying Czech uranium; now even the monopolized energy producer in the Czech Republic, CEZ, has started buying uranium abroad because the prices of Czech uranium are simply too high. The Government is thus considering a proposal to close the uranium mines once and for all, reports LD. (JJ: The existence of "large domestic resources of uranium, which won't have to be imported" was used quite recently by the same Government as an argument for the project of a mammoth nuclear power plant in Temelin.)

Former Interior Minister Tomas Sokol (1990-June 1992) comments on the "now established fact" that the Federal Ministry of Interior under Petr Cermak (June - December 1992), who is the current vice-chairman of the ruling ODS, sold personal data of 2,000,000 citizens from its database to a private company, which then sold the data to another company, Procter and Gamble. This is "simply incredible", says Sokol. According to Sokol, the owners of the company which bought the information were former Secret Police officers, and the operation must have been approved by the higher echelons of the Ministry.

LIDOVE NOVINY (liberal) bring information about the report of the Ministry of Agriculture, which states that imported products - especially fish from Yugoslavia, Germany and the former USSR - were proved to be more contaminated by cadmium and other heavy metals than Czech products.

In a full-page interview with two leading Czech environmentalists, Bedrich Moldan and Ivan Dejmal, who held successively the post of Czech Minister for Environment in 1989-1992, Mr.Moldan says that the "lost battle" against the continued construction of the nuclear power plant in Temelín "does not necessarily mean a lost war". Both ex-Ministers criticize the passive role of the currenty Ministry, lead by the Christian Democrat F.Benda.

MLADA FRONTA DNES (centrist, independent) reports a case of a Slovak-born citizen living in the Czech town of Uherske Hradiste since 1988, whose ID card expired in March 1993 while he was waiting for the Czech citizenship. Without the citizenship, however, he could not get a new ID card, and without it he could not find legal work in the CR. Although he applied for Czech citizenship already in December 1992, by the end of May he was still without citizenship, ID, passport or job. After many urgencies - including personal letters to the Premier - he finally received the citizenship on May, 4, 1993. He is one of the 200 fortunate Slovaks living in Uherske Hradiste who did receive the citizenship, while 1300 more are still waiting. Many Slovaks, who have been living there for many years, are not only deprived of the possibility to travel abroad while they are waiting for the citizenship and passport, but they are also afraid to cross the Czecho-Slovak border and visit their relatives in Slovakia without a val

id ID, reports MFD.