Paroubek also said the president's position strangely allied him with the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft, an organization supporting Germans expelled by the nascent Czechoslovak government in 1945. The Landsmannschaft opposes compensation.

For better or worse, Klaus' position is in line with much of the Czech population's: Surveys show a solid majority loathes the Sudeten advocacy group because of its efforts to portray the Germans as war victims who deserve financial compensation.

The recent war of words between Klaus and Paroubek highlights the controversial nature of the prime minister's gesture to German antifascist fighters, a move that has elicited both praise and condemnation from politicians and groups representing the former German citizens of Czechoslovakia. The brouhaha began the first week of July when, prior to a state visit to Austria, Paroubek announced his intention to make a gesture of reconciliation, or symbolic compensation, toward Germans who had lived in Czechoslovakia and fought against the Nazis.

Klaus reacted vehemently to the proposal, saying that it violated the 1997 Czech-German agreement, which states that government leaders on both sides would not reopen issues from the two countries' conflict-ridden past.

Paroubek, a Social Democrat, is the first Czech prime minister to speak publicly about the need for some type of reconciliation with the nearly 2.5 million expelled Germans, known as Sudetens because most came from the border Sudetenland region annexed by Hitler in 1938. The annexation was supported by most ethnic Germans, and that support was among the chief reasons they were expelled, stripped of property and citizenship. A few thousand Germans who could prove they fought the Nazis were not sent into exile, but most of these relocated to Germany voluntarily after the war.

Under the communist regime, all Sudetens were characterized as traitors to the state who had caused the destruction of Czechoslovakia. The post-1989 revolution discussion has been difficult because Czechs have had to come to terms with the cruelty inflicted on many of the expellees, including women and children, by vengeful mobs.

Klaus called the proposal to compensate Sudetens who fought fascism "exceptionally unwise and exceptionally dangerous" because, he says, it could open a Pandora's box of consequences.

The Sudeten German Landsmannschaft, in a written statement, rejected the prime minister's approach and said Paroubek was attempting to divide the expellees into "good and bad, which is at total variance with the truth."

Perhaps the oddest aspect of the debate was the Landsmannschaft's praise of Klaus' viewpoint, because Klaus has often infuriated Sudetens by saying they cannot "rewrite history" to suit their own purposes. However, Paroubek's gesture was met with enthusiasm by his Austrian counterpart, Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, who said Paroubek's willingness to recognize the antifascist fighters marked "the first time the principle of collective guilt is not being applied to the German minority."

Paroubek has not elaborated on the specifics of his proposal, saying only that he would submit it in a few weeks for approval by the Cabinet. Defending his stance in an interview with the Czech News Agency July 14, he said, "These people [German antifascists] often sacrificed much of their lives in the fight against Nazism and for Czechoslovakia."

Paroubek's effort to recognize the sacrifice of the antifascist Germans is supported by his coalition partners as well as the junior opposition Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia. The senior opposition Civic Democrats, a party founded by Klaus, is dead set against any compensation for the Sudetens.

A longtime supporter of compensation for all expelled Germans, Charles University political science professor and former MP Bohumíl Doležal said Paroubek's offer to the antifascist fighters is tailored to appeal to the communists, whose strength in the Chamber of Deputies could guarantee or torpedo legislation. Many of the former antifascists were communists at the time or later joined the Communist Party in Germany.

"Paroubek's offer will apply mainly to the Sudeten communists, and they happen to be the only ones who took their property with them when they left," he said.

Doležal expressed annoyance with the vagueness of Paroubek's reconciliation plan. "It is odd that people should not receive compensation but instead some sort of recognition," he said. "What will they get? Some sort of diploma? I find that nutty."