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Man on a mission

From missile defense to visa waiver status, Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek spent the past week pushing controversial policy

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
March 5th, 2008 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST
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Mirek Topolánek and U.S. President George W. Bush were all smiles Feb. 27 as they discussed missile defense, visas and NATO status.
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Policy pushers


As Prime Minister Topolánek championed his controversial agendas during his visit to North America, other leading politicians didn't lag far behind.
In a move that evoked sharp criticism from the governing coalition and European Parliament, opposition leader and Social Democratic Party Chairman Jiří Paroubek traveled to Syria to meet with President Bashar al-Assad. While local politicians, including Topolánek, condemned his associating with the oppressive Syrian government as "criminal and at odds with the Czech Republic's foreign interest," Paroubek maintains his visit was not in conflict with government policy. According to party spokeswoman Květa Kočová, Paroubek and al-Assad discussed prospective business partnerships between the two countries, human rights issues and Syria's stance on the resolution of conflicts in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, President Klaus, who is known for his skeptical view on
global warming, flew to New York City March 2 to attend an international conference on global warming.
Although he pledged to keep his speech at the conference moderate, Klaus' past criticisms of global warming activists, namely Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, had local environmentalists trembling.
As Klaus told TV Nova prior to his February re-election, "The president should sometimes go against the tide."

On Feb. 27, Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek sat aboard the Government Special aircraft, en route to Washington, D.C.
Somewhere over Iceland, a wave of nostalgia compelled him to chronicle his thoughts. “I am thinking of my first trip to America,” he mused in notes he later published. “I rented a car in Las Vegas and headed toward the Grand Canyon. On the left side of the road, there was a small Indian shop, where I stopped, bought a leather hat and a CD with the clerk’s own renditions of Midwestern country songs. … I felt like a person whose childhood dreams had come true: I was in America.”
Unfortunately for the Czech government, this romanticized dream of the West seemed to influence the vexing decisions marking Topolánek’s working visit to the United States and Canada.
In the course of the three-day trip, the pro-Western prime minister took it upon himself to sanction a spectrum of controversial policies, single-handedly bulldozing the reservations of the European Union and his own government.
Perhaps the highest-profile negotiations took place immediately upon Topolánek’s arrival in Washington, where he paid a visit to U.S. President George W. Bush.
During their hour-long discourse, the two heads of state made several crucial decisions regarding the Czech Republic’s foreign and security policy.
Taking steps toward the signing of a bilateral agreement on missile defense, Topolánek and Bush discussed the circumstances that would allow the United States to erect a radar base on Czech soil as part of a Central European missile-defense shield — a plan that more than 70 percent of local citizens oppose.
In an effort to negotiate the best possible circumstances for the Czech side, Topolánek managed to arrange for a future collaboration between Czech companies and scientists and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
In addition, the two parties discussed the future signing of a NATO Status of Forces Agreement, which would enable the presence of U.S. forces on Czech territory.
In the end, Topolánek announced that the Czech Republic was only a few words away from signing the Great Treaty, as the bilateral agreement is now called, and added that the April 2 NATO summit in Bucharest was a viable deadline for its finalization.
Not so fast
What he apparently forgot, however, was that the missile-defense treaty could only take effect if ratified by Parliament. Given the skepticism of the public and the opposition of at least 50 percent of deputies, pushing the treaty through the lower house will not be an easy feat. Although Topolánek has been lucky in getting his controversial agenda approved in the Chamber of Deputies, the radar treaty is going to take a lot of work,” said political analyst Bohumil Doležal.   
Missile defense aside, the second controversial portion of the Bush-Topolánek talks revolved around the visa waiver program. Based on a “memorandum of understanding” signed Feb. 26 by Interior Minister Ivan Langer and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the program aims to cancel visa requirements for Czechs traveling to the United States. Slated to take effect in October, the agreement will place the Czech Republic on a list of 27 countries with similar privileges.
“I’ve always felt our visa laws needed to change,” Bush told journalists after the Feb. 27 meeting. “I didn’t like the idea that we treated our friends in the Czech Republic differently than our other friends in Europe.”
While lauded by Langer and Topolánek, the visa agreement drew sharp criticism from the government opposition as well as European Commission representatives, who were alarmed by a provision giving the United States unprecedented access to private data regarding Czech citizens.
Despite these factors, both Bush and Topolánek appeared to be brimming with optimism as they sat in the Oval Office answering media queries immediately after their meeting. As the Czech News Agency observed, Topolánek proclaimed he was “a statesman ready to push forward his views” despite unfavorable public opinion, whereupon Bush patted him on the back and smiled.
“We’re determined to make the year 2008 a strong chapter in our relationship,” Bush said.  “We view the Czech Republic as a strategic partner.”
Of course, the meeting of the two luminaries was not devoid of corresponding formalities. Catering to Topolánek’s penchant for the sport, Bush presented him with a golf bag and a leather-bound book on U.S. golf courses. In return, Bush received a gift befitting his own hobby: a handcrafted Czech hunting rifle. He liked the rifle very much, a beaming Topolánek told journalists before heading off to lunch with another avid hunter, Vice President Dick Cheney.
Bold moves
After a daylong string of meetings at the White House and the U.S. Capitol, Topolánek deemed it time to show some patriotism. Aside from traditional acts, such as laying a wreath next to a statue of Czechoslovakia’s founding father, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the prime minister  demonstrated his support for certain notable Czech-Americans with an act that disgruntled many local citizens and politicians.
Undeterred by the viewpoints of former President Václav Havel and current President Václav Klaus — who have both distanced themselves from the issue — Topolánek awarded the Prime Minister’s Medal to the first of three surviving members of the Mašín group, an armed resistance trio that fought against the Czechoslovak communist regime in the 1950s.
While seen as heroes by approximately 50 percent of the local public according to news polls, the men are considered controversial figures by many who condemn them for killing two policemen and a cashier in the name of their subversive activity.
One such opponent, Jaroslav Břehovský from Beroun, central Bohemia, even filed a criminal complaint against Topolánek for bestowing a prestigious state award on such a contentious persona.
Nevertheless, the prime minister stands behind his decision. “I’ve fulfilled a big dream of mine,” he told the daily Právo Feb. 29. “It’s a step I’ve been contemplating for quite some time.”
Concluding his trip with a visit to Ottawa, where he discussed defense strategy with his Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper, Topolánek returned home March 1, apparently determined to continue in the role of a one-man powerhouse for controversial policy.
One day after his return, he shocked the public with two more dubious decisions, expressing his wishes for the government to recognize the Serbian autonomous region of Kosovo and supporting the return of Christian Democratic Party Chairman Jiří Čunek, who was accused of corruption last year, to the Cabinet.
“It won’t help the government’s or my own image in the media,” he announced on Czech television March 2. “But if the Christian Democrats want Čunek to take the post, he has a right to it.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


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