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Prague (dpa) - Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a rare vocal global- warming sceptic among heads of state, is "somewhat surprised" that former US vice president Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, the president's spokesman Petr Hajek said in a statement. "The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct," the statement said. "It rather seems that Gore's doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace." Klaus said in a recent speech that environmentalists' efforts to halt global warming "fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity." The Czech president publicly expresses doubt on...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and anti-communist dissident who went directly from jail to the leadership of his country in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, has kept himself busy since retiring from the presidency. For several years he has been the host of an annual conference, Forum 2000, which brings together a diverse set of public figures to debate international issues. Because Havel is one of that endangered species, the pro-American European, he invites a genuinely diverse group of debaters. Because of his vast prestige his invitations are very rarely refused. Hence the former director of the...

On Sunday Aung San Suu Kyi will celebrate her 60th birthday, which in a Buddhist culture marks an important milestone in one's life. I would like to meet her and give her a rose like the one she is seen holding in a photograph in my study. Such an ordinary wish, however, in the case of such an extraordinary woman as Aung San Suu Kyi may seem a silly idea. The last time I wrote about her in The Post [op-ed, Oct. 12, 2003] was shortly after "unknown" assassins tried to deprive her of her life and Burmese generals put...

With the European Union agreeing on January 31 to lift the sanctions that it imposed on Cuba in 2003 after Fidel Castro imprisoned 75 political dissidents, European officials will be resuming their visits to the island. Spain's government pushed for the policy switch that critics have labeled a victory for appeasement. Cuban dissidents and exiles, Spanish opposition parties, human rights organizations and former Czech President Vaclav Havel have denounced the new policy as an abomination. Still, in foreign affairs as complicated as those involving Cuba, there are rarely any clear-cut victories. Madrid's proposal triggered a welcome and enlightening debate on...

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...

It is exactly 60 years since the world first heard of Rudolf Vrba’s and Alfred Wetzler’s successful escape from Auschwitz, an escape that brought to light accounts of Hitler’s extermination camps. The testimony given by Vrba and Wetzler forced representatives of the democratic world to face facts that many did not want to believe, even after the end of the war. Thanks to Vrba, Wetzler and countless numbers of other witnesses, the horrors and extent of the Nazi final solution are universally known. Like the Nazi Holocaust, the crimes and brutal reality of Soviet communism were also outlined and understood...

The heroes of Eastern Europe's anti-communist movement yesterday denounced Fidel Castro's "Stalinist" regime in Cuba and demanded action from the West to encourage its peaceful overthrow. Lech Walesa, the former Polish president, Vaclav Havel, the former Czechoslovak president, and Arpad Goncz, the former Hungarian president, made their call in a letter to The Daily Telegraph and other leading newspapers abroad. The letter from men who were themselves victims of communist oppression will bring a furious response from the Cuban regime. It is acutely sensitive to attacks from countries which were once its closest allies. Over the past decade, it has...

<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>

Last fall, as the United States rumbled toward war against Saddam Hussein, literary reviews and higher-brow magazines wrestled with an intriguing if unlikely hypothetical: What would George Orwell say if he were here today? Christopher Hitchens, the fire-breathing British journalist who kick-started the discussion with his book Why Orwell Matters, suggested that a contemporary Eric Blair "would have seen straight through the characters who chant ‘No War On Iraq’" and helped the rest of us to "develop the fiber to call Al-Qaeda what it actually is." Washington Post book reviewer George Scialabba stated confidently that "Orwell would associate himself with...

http://ToogoodReports.com/ Call me a Cold War sentimentalist — but smile when you say it. I never felt so alive, as when I was passing through Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall, my heart in my throat, between free, West Berlin, and its garrisoned sister city in the East.And how I lived, with a few American dollars in my pocket, on the other side of The Wall. Two weeks ago, on Joe Millionaire, I saw golddiggers and the ditchdigger spend nights in the sort of four-star hotels I once stayed in. In June, 1989, just months before The Wall fell, I...

<p>OSLO, Norway (AP) — The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has received 150 nominations for the 2003 award, with a majority of nominations coming from North America, committee secretary Geir Lundestad said Tuesday.</p> <p>Nominations, which had to be postmarked by Feb. 1, are made by past laureates, committee members, university professors and select organizations. They're kept secret for 50 years, although those making them often announce their choice.</p>

Czech President Vaclav Havel spoke for the first time Monday to the man he is championing for a Nobel Peace Prize -- from a telephone behind the reception desk at the Biltmore Hotel, just before his black-tie dinner. ''I send my warmest embrace to you and the Czech people,'' Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas told Havel. ``Tell them that the Cuban people are already on the path to liberty.''Havel replied with a promise of ``my support, and that I hope that all your goals for the Varela Project come true.''Payá cousin Francisco de Armas, acting as an English-Spanish translator, relayed the exchange,...