Czech-US pact on anti-missile shield in May: press
PRAGUE (AFP) — A pact on a controversial US anti-missile installation on Czech soil may be signed on May 5, a Prague newspaper said Tuesday citing diplomatic sources from both sides.
The signing will coincide with a conference on the planned anti-missile shield due to be held in the capital, the Hospodarske Noviny newspaper said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been invited to the May 5 conference, it said.
Czech junior foreign minister Tomas Pojar has said only that Rice was scheduled to visit this spring but the date had not yet been settled.
May 5 is an emotionally charged date for Czechs as it commemorates a 1945 uprising in Prague against the Nazi occupiers.
The daily recalled that Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg was due to visit Washington on April 28.
Washington had said it is confident negotiations with Prague and Warsaw on basing a radar and interceptors on their territories can be completed before President George W. Bush leaves office, early next year.
The Czech government is even more optimistic, saying it hopes to complete bilateral negotiations on the radar system before an early April NATO summit, without waiting for separate talks between the US and Warsaw to wrap up.
But roughly two thirds of Czechs oppose the antimissile project aimed to shoot down missiles fired by what Washington terms "rogue states" such as Iran.
