Václav Klaus

PRAGUE - In an interview marking 25 years of their country's NATO membership, former Czech presidents Vaclav Klaus and Milos Zeman told public television broadcaster Ceska televize the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a huge mistake and that the so-called Kosovo was a terrorist state Prague should not have recognised.

PRAGUE - Fifteen years after recognising the so-called Kosovo, the Czech Republic will send an ambassador to Pristina for the first time.

At the government's proposal, President Petr Pavel has appointed Bohumil Mazanek to the post, the Czech ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement.

Mazanek will take over from the Czech charge d'affaires in Pristina.

While that may have attracted some additional support from a sizable but fragmented anti-establishment and extremist minority that has emerged in the country, it also appeared to help mobilise the liberal democratic part of the electorate. The resulting turnout of over 70 per cent was a record for the second round of the election.

In the early years of the transition from communism, the erstwhile one-party states of eastern Europe would put Michnik's dictum to the test. In 1991, a former Czech dissident and lawyer, Hana Marvanova, was working on new regulations designed to remake her country's national broadcaster in the image of the BBC.

"We're defending Czechia - hard and without compromise."

The billboards of the Czech Republic's ruling ANO party for this week's election for the European Parliament show that something has gone badly wrong with the country's relationship with the EU.

Former Czech leader blames West for Ukraine crisis

PRAGUE -- Vaclav Klaus has accused the West, especially the United States, for escalating the crisis in Ukraine and an attempt to be "world's only policeman."...