The Prague Post Online: News: Czechs head to D.C. for talks

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Czechs head to D.C. for talks

Delegation to be briefed by Department of Homeland Security

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 31st, 2007 issue

A Czech delegation is scheduled to arrive in Washington, D.C., Feb. 2 for a crash course on the security measures the United States requires countries to adopt before their citizens can travel there without a visa.

In the latest, and most significant, sign that a change in U.S. visa policy is forthcoming, five representatives from the Foreign Affairs and Interior ministries are making the trip, meeting with officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Ivo Svoboda, deputy director of the consular department of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, said the group could stay for up to two days.

The meeting comes one week after a senior DHS official was in Prague briefing representatives from 13 countries currently on a shortlist to join the U.S. visa-waiver program, which grants visa-free travel to citizens of countries that have adopted advanced technologies in passports and background checks.

The Czech Republic is the first of what the United States calls “roadmap countries” — nations hoping to join the program — to get an invite from Washington for further discussions, says Zuzana Opletalová, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

The other 12 countries hail mostly from the former Eastern bloc, but also include Greece, Cyprus and South Korea.

Czechs have long protested the visa policies of the United States, Canada and Australia. While citizens of those countries can stay here up to 90 days without a visa, Czechs must obtain one — at great difficulty, some maintain — to travel there.

They are not alone. While citizens of most of the original 15 EU member states do not need a visa to enter the United States, 11 of the 12 newest member states — Slovenia being the exception — do.

Tensions between the Czech Republic and the United States peaked last year when the Foreign Affairs Ministry retaliated, implementing harsh entry requirements for U.S., Canadian and Australian citizens, including a demand that they show proof of health insurance coverage totaling $35,000 (754,600 Kč) or more at border check points.

Shifting position
Ultimately, the decision to extend the visa-waiver program resides with the U.S. Congress. In recent months, however, the Bush administration has hinted at its willingness to lobby for a change.

At a NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, last month, U.S. President George W. Bush told Czech President Václav Klaus that visas would be lifted for Czechs by the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Days later, the DHS pledged that it would begin focusing more on a country’s security implementations, and less on the percentage of rejected visa applications from citizens of that county, when determining admission to the visa-waiver program.

(Currently, one of the key criteria for a country to join the program is that 3 percent or fewer of its citizens are rejected when applying for a U.S. visa; the Czech rejection rate hovers around 10 percent).

Paul Rosenzweig, the DHS’s assistant secretary for international affairs, was in Prague Jan. 13 to meet with representatives of the roadmap countries. During a daylong meeting, he outlined how countries could improve their ability to exchange information about individuals traveling to the States and about how to tackle the threat posed by people who travel on lost or stolen passports.

The United States requires all visa-waiver countries to issue biometric passports, which contain biological data such as fingerprints and a digital photo.

As of September, all newly issued Czech passports will contain a biometric photo, and, as of next year, passports will also contain a biometric fingerprint, according to Opletalová.

If Congress decides to expand the visa-waiver program, each country would be admitted as it meets the requirements.

“We will not hold anybody hostage,” Rosenzweig said at a press conference at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic. “The reality is that this will move at different paces in different countries both because of political will and because of capacity.”

How smoothly the process goes, he said, is partly dependent on the overall relationship between the Czech Republic and the United States, which he called “excellent.”

Quid pro quo?
The visa-waiver issue seems to be gathering momentum at the same time another major agreement between Washington and Prague is in the works.

The Czech government is weighing a U.S. request to build a radar base in Jince, central Bohemia, as part of its missile-defense shield that would work in conjunction with a missile base the U.S. wants to build in Poland.

Rosenzweig denied the two issues were related, and dismissed the suggestion that a Czech decision about the base could influence the U.S. commitment to letting Czechs travel visa-free.

“The visa-waiver program stands independently,” he told reporters. “It will turn on objective criteria related to travel and security,” he said, but added that the radar-base issue “bears some relationship to the overall U.S.-Czech relationship.”

Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com

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