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I VIVIDLY remember the slightly ludicrous, slightly risqué and somewhat distressing predicament in which Western diplomats in Prague found themselves during the Cold War.They regularly needed to resolve the delicate issue of whether to invite to their embassy celebrations various Charter 77 signatories, human-rights activists, critics of the communist regime, displaced politicians, or even banned writers, scholars and journalists - people with whom the diplomats were generally friends. Sometimes we dissidents were not invited, but received an apology; and sometimes we were invited, but did not accept the invitation so as not to complicate the lives of our courageous diplomat...

I vividly remember the slightly ludicrous, slightly risqué and somewhat distressing predicament in which Western diplomats in Prague found themselves during the Cold War.... Sometimes we dissidents were not invited, but received an apology, and sometimes we were invited, but did not accept the invitation so as not to complicate the lives of our courageous diplomat friends.... But today this is happening. One of the strongest and most powerful democratic institutions in the world -- the European Union -- has no qualms in making a public promise to the Cuban dictatorship that it will re-institute diplomatic Apartheid. The EU's embassies...

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom that it must steal in upon them by degrees and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes in order to be received. --David Hume, Of the Liberty of the Press, 1742...Mr. Carter, having staked his "observer" reputation on this ridiculously lopsided game, sealed the fate of the Venezuelans when he rushed to anoint Chávez as the winner and advised Mr. Powell to do the same. This betrayal of a neighboring democracy may one day leave ugly...

...Things have gotten bad enough that some are calling for Mr. Annan's resignation, amid talk of former Czech President Vaclav Havel as successor.... But however you assess Mr. Havel's chances of becoming secretary general, for Mr. Annan the comparison is devastating. Mr. Havel, after all, is a hero on behalf of freedom: A man who helped bring about the end of communist dominance in Eastern Europe, despite imprisonment and the threat of death -- a man who could write that "Evil must be confronted in its womb and, if it can't be done otherwise, then it has to be dealt...

PRAGUE : Former Czech president Vaclav Havel described Cuba as "a giant prison", as he called for international mobilisation to persuade the country to commit to a peaceful transition to democracy. "Cuba is a giant prison. We have to put up alarm bells around the walls," he said. "With every signature, every conference we make another step towards freedom in Cuba." The former playwright dissident, who himself spent five years in communist prisons, was speaking on the second day of a summit on Cuba attended by European and American former heads of state and governments, parliamentarians and human rights capaigners...

Vaclav Havel has opened an international conference in Prague on promoting democracy in Cuba. He told delegates that Cuba's situation would change soon and that opponents to Fidel Castro's 45-year rule should prepare for the end of "dictatorship". The meeting is also attended by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and former Latin American leaders. A Cuban diplomat told the BBC that the US was behind the event, which she called an unwanted meddling. In the 1970s and 1980s Mr Havel was one of the most prominent dissidents within Europe's communist bloc. He was in office for 12 years...

NEW DELHI (AFP) - India awarded former Czech president Vaclav Havel its highest honour, the Mahatma Gandhi peace prize, saluting him for keeping alive the "flame of democracy" when his country was under communist rule. AFP/File Photo   At a ceremony at the presidential palace in New Delhi on Monday, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam hailed Havel as "a courageous voice of democracy" as he gave him the Gandhi peace prize which carries with it an award of 10 million rupees (200,000 dollars). "The way he (Havel) kindled and kept the flame of democracy burning amidst a storm of repression and...

<p>In making the case for war against Iraq, Vice President Cheney has continued to suggest that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with a Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker five months before the attacks, even as the story was falling apart under scrutiny by the FBI, CIA and the foreign government that first made the allegation.</p>

<p>LONDON &#8212; The heroes of Eastern Europe's anti-communist movement denounced Fidel Castro's "Stalinist" regime in Cuba yesterday and demanded action from the West to encourage its peaceful overthrow.</p> <p>Former Polish President Lech Walesa, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former Hungarian President Arpad Goncz made their call in a letter to the Daily Telegraph and several other leading European newspapers.</p>

<p>In his quiet fashion, Vaclav Havel, the playwright and political dissident who provided much of the moral force that helped bring down a Communist dictatorship without resort to arms, retired the other day after 13 years as president of Czechoslovakia and, since 1993, the Czech Republic. He leaves a legacy that conventional political figures should envy and emulate.</p>

The course of power ultimately changes only if there are forces present to oppose it. The Bush Administration, for example, rarely feels the rub of resistance; it is able to justify gratuitous tax breaks, snuggle up to friendly corporations, and fling environmentalism on the slag heap not least because the Democrats—cowed, confused, incoherent—too often end up speaking, when they speak at all, in the helium voice of a Warner Bros. pipsqueak. They hide, hoping that power, in the shape of a self-revealing grotesque (e.g., Trent Lott), will do all the work for them. It's a tactic of vacuous exhaustion, not...

The New York Review of BooksOctober 24, 2002 Feature A Farewell to Politics By Vaclav Havel, Translated from the Czech by Paul Wilson The following speech was given by President Havel in New York on September 19, 2002, at the Graduate Center of the City University, on the occasion of his last official trip to the United States as President of the Czech Republic. I still have vivid memories of the concert almost thirteen years ago--in February 1990--when New York welcomed me as the freshly minted president of Czechoslovakia. It was not, of course, just to honor me personally. Through...

Rattled Czechs hand security over to the Pentagon By Ian Traynor in Prague November 16 2002 The Czech President, Vaclav Havel, has signed into law a bill handing responsibility for his country's security to the Pentagon during the two-day NATO summit next week, amid mounting fears of terrorist attack and street violence. Prague police have arrested five Czechs on suspicion of plotting sabotage during the first NATO meeting of its kind since the September11 attacks. The unprecedented surrender of responsibility to a foreign power comes as normally circumspect European intelligence and law enforcement officials have issued a wave of stark...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Czech President Vaclav Havel, at the White House for business meetings and a social dinner, assured President Bush on Wednesday of the Czech Republic's friendship and called for NATO to play a post-Sept. 11 role in facing down ``a new kind of evil.'' Bush welcomed Havel with effusive affection, calling him ``a truly remarkable person, a man who symbolizes courage and determination, and a man who loves freedom.'' ``Mr. President, you're a unique person who has helped change the world,'' Bush said as the two presidents opened their official talks before the fireplace in the Oval Office....