A daily in-depth look at current events in the Czech Republic.
PM Fischer visits Israel[22-07-2009 14:35 UTC]
By Jan Richter
The Czech prime minister, Jan Fischer, is in Israel for a three-day working
visit. After meeting the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, in Jerusalem on
Wednesday, he’s set to meet for talks with his counterpart, Prime
Minister Netanyahu. Czech Radio’s Middle East correspondent Břetislav
Tureček, is following the visit in Jerusalem. Radio Prague asked him what
the main points on the Czech Prime Minister’s agenda were.
“As the prime minister put it, he has come to support bilateral
relations
with Israel; that means he is not going to talk so much about the Middle
East peace process. This morning, he already met Israeli President Shimon
Peres and they both said there was a lot of space for mutual cooperation
and better relations, but what was interesting, none of them said anything
about the peace process or about politics in the presence of reporters.”
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rejected a US
bid to
stop construction in East Jerusalem. Is Mr Fischer going to express his
views on this issue?
“On his way to Israel on Tuesday, Prime Minister Fischer said that he
was not going to raise this issue with his Israeli hosts, Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu or President Perez, on his own. Mr Fischer said this
was
a very a difficult matter – all the problems related to Jerusalem and
all
the settlements and so on, and that it was up to both sides in this
conflict to solve them. So he’s not going to follow suit with the EU or
the US, as you mentioned, which are going to push for Israel to stop
settlement activities that are regarded as a breach of international
law.”
Mr Fischer left out Palestine from his travel plans. Do you know why
he
decided not to visit the West Bank or the Gaza strip this time?
“Well, I specifically asked the prime minister’s spokesman, Roman
Prorok, about this, and he told me that this visit was not a political
one.
He mentioned that neither the previous Czech prime minister, Mirek
Topolánek, visited the Palestinian territories during his first visit to
the region or Palestinian officials. That’s why Mr Fischer says he came
to see only Israeli officials.”
Prime Minister Fischer has a Jewish background. Does the visit have a
strong personal significance for him as well?
“It’s difficult to say because he didn’t talk to the press about it.
Yesterday, he visited the Western Wall, the holiest site of Judaism, and
he
was accompanied by Shmuel Rabinowitz, the chief rabbi of the Western Wall,
and it was interesting because rabbi Rabinowitz asked the Czech prime
minister, ‘What it’s like to be a Jewish prime minister of a
non-Jewish
country?’. I could not hear clearly what the prime minister said, what
he
answered, but it seemed anyway that the Israelis appreciate that he’s a
Jewish politician, and he himself, as I saw him yesterday, welcomed the
opportunity to pray with Chief Rabbi Rabinowitz at the Western Wall and to
see some of the most significant places of the Jewish nation and also of
the Jewish faith.”
Also in this edition:
Members of the academic community are raising the alarm over planned budget
cuts for the Academy of Sciences. The cuts – proposed by the
government’s Council for Research and Development - would see state funds
for research projects fall by half over the next three years, something
that critics believe will be fatal for Czech scientific research.
Královská Kaple, the King’s Chapel, was part of the history of the city
of Brno for 600 years. But at the beginning of the 20th century it was
pulled down to make way for modernisation. The destruction caused protest,
and the progressive city planners were made to agree that one day they
would resurrect the building.
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