Czech Republic

In a bid to win Russian support for a U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe, the United States has proposed delaying its activation until there is concrete intelligence that Iran has long-range missiles, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday. Gates made the offer directly to senior Russian officials during a visit to Moscow last week. But he chose to publicize it in Prague, on the same day President Bush highlighted the threat of Iran's missile program, which the president said might enable Tehran to strike the U.S. mainland by 2015.

WASHINGTON -- Iceland has no military. Luxembourg has no air force. Greece doesn't want to bomb a neighbor. And the three other nations not contributing forces to the NATO air war against Serbia have only been alliance members for two weeks.But those six countries, including the new members -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- bridle at the suggestion that they are not full partners in the allied attack."What Greece is doing," said Alexander Philon, the Greek ambassador to the United States, "and what we decided a long time ago to do with the full agreement of NATO, is to open all of our ports, roads and airfields to the mission but not get involved directly in the actual bombing of our neighbor.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Many cities are known for particular products: Damascus for steel, Cincinnati for chili, Antwerp for diamonds and Washington for politicians.Prague has music.On any Sunday afternoon, more than 20 classical concerts are going on in the city. Melodies pour from every church, chapel and synagogue -- even from the stairs of the National Museum and the battlements of the Prague Castle.Highbrows can catch dinner and an opera any night of the week. Lowbrows can get a crash course in classical music just by walking through town and listening to the sidewalk musicians.

TODAY I WANT TO tell you about an exciting innovation in television programming from the Czech Republic.By way of background, I should explain that the Czech Republic is a nation that very few Americans visit because they're not sure how to spell "Czech." This is a shame, because the Czech Republic is a fascinating place where many historic things occurred in the past. The Hapsburg Monarchy is only one example. Until 1993, the Czech Republic was connected with Slovakia; together they went by the name "Hungary."

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Two extraordinarily detailed reports on human rights abuses in Kosovo, drawn from official Western sources, present a picture of an ugly war, full of individual and collective cruelty and crime by the Serbs, followed by an ugly peace displaying many of the same depredations, if on a smaller scale, by the province's Albanians.The reports, obtained by the New York Times from the compilers, are prepared by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from its own interviews.

The question has been asked more than once: Which of the human arts has the strongest impact on people's lives?Music, you say; painting, literature, drama. You can take your pick, of course, follow your inclination. But remember, these are not always with you, not always there.If you visit Prague, you'll have your answer in a minute. Architecture.Prague is a thousand-year-old city, the capital of the Czech Republic in Central Europe. Unlike many other European cities, it was never reduced to rubble by war, as, say, Warsaw or Berlin were.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- For the first time since Slovakia was created in 1993 from the peaceful split of Czechoslovakia, its voters yesterday chose their president by direct election.While the vote was new, the two leading candidates were not. The front-runner, Rudolf Schuster, 65, is the official candidate of the four-party coalition government, a political veteran who was the Communist leader of parliament, served after the anti-Communist revolution of 1989 as Czechoslovakia's ambassador to Canada and is the widely respected mayor of the eastern Slovak town of Kosice.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- At 21, Sarka Snoblova is old enough to do the sad math of her life. Her monthly salary as a small-town seamstress is $120. Her allergy medicine costs $30. An apartment would cost $150, excluding water, electricity and heat."

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- When the Czech Republic's President Vaclav Havel flew into the Canadian capital, Ottawa, last week for a three-day visit, he had some explaining to do.Fresh from NATO's Washington summit, Havel thanked Canada in an address to both houses of parliament for its support of his country's application to join the military alliance.Yet of the three new Central European members that formally joined NATO on March 12 -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- the Czechs find themselves at odds with the alliance over Yugoslavia.

MOST AMERICANS are pitifully ignorant of geography. This was clearly demonstrated recently when the Gallup Organization sent its pollsters to Chicago to ask randomly selected residents if they could name at least three of the six major continents. The results were shocking: Most of the pollsters never found Chicago at all; of those who did, all but one fell into the Chicago River.Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident of American geographical ignorance. Just last month, the major U.S. airlines, investigating an increase in the number of delayed flights, discovered that many of their pilots cannot read maps and are finding their destination cities by, in the words of an airline spokesperson, "flying real low and following buses."

Donald A. Otenasek, longtime financial editor of the old News American who enjoyed traveling, died Tuesday of multiple organ failure at Franklin Square Hospital Center. The longtime Rosedale resident was 78. Born in Baltimore and raised on Ashland Avenue, he was a 1949 graduate of City College. He attended Loyola College for a year and graduated in 1953 from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Mr. Otenasek began his 25-year newspaper career as a police reporter at the News American in 1961, and later was a county reporter and finally the newspaper's financial editor.

Swimming NBAC's Morris qualifies for U.S. team at worlds A strong U.S. nationals for North Baltimore Aquatic Club continued Saturday night, when 18-year-old Brennan Morris surprised everyone, including himself, by finishing second in the 1,500-meter freestyle, earning a spot on the United States team headed to the world championships in Rome in two weeks. Morris, who moved to Baltimore with his family three years ago from Lewisburg, Pa., lowered his career-best time by 20 seconds in the preliminaries Friday morning and then shaved an additional four seconds off that time in the final a day later, touching the wall in 15 minutes, 13.47 seconds.

Eastern Europe dominates the latest Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program - Czech and Polish composers, a Czech soloist. The results are energizing. The Czech material, Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 and Scherzo capriccioso, is being recorded live at each concert for a cycle of the composer's works that the orchestra has been making for the Naxos label. Music director Marin Alsop's strong affinity for this repertoire came through again Thursday night at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, especially when she turned to Dvorak's Seventh.

MOSCOW - Shipments of Russian natural gas to Europe came to an abrupt halt yesterday in the middle of a winter cold spell. Russia accused neighboring Ukraine of shutting down pipelines that supply a fifth of the continent's gas, while Ukraine charged that Russia had halted all deliveries. The situation marked a sharp escalation of a politically charged fuel-price dispute that has renewed concern about Europe's dependence on Russian gas and Ukrainian pipelines. It followed a precipitous fall in shipments Tuesday, when more than a dozen countries reported a complete stop or major drops in supplies.

Best European cities to visit 1 Florence, Italy 2 Rome 3 Salzburg, Austria 4 Venice, Italy 5 Vienna, Austria 6 Barcelona, Spain 7 Paris 8 Bruges, Belgium 9 Siena, Italy 10 Prague, Czech Republic Source: Conde Nast Travel Readers Choice Awards

4 European aid workers abducted in Somalia PARIS: Armed men ambushed a convoy in Somalia yesterday, taking four European aid workers and two Kenyans hostage, officials said. French aid group Action Against Hunger said the attack took place in the town of Dhusamareb, about 360 miles north of the capital, Mogadishu, when the six were going to an airport to board a chartered plane for Nairobi, Kenya. The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said two Kenyan pilots and four aid workers - two French citizens, a Belgian and a Bulgarian - were kidnapped.

In its beginning, mercury glass was considered a knockoff of the real silver furnishing the houses of the well-to-do, says Diane Lytwyn, author of Pictorial Guide to Silvered Mercury Glass (Collector Books, $24.95). Now, the well-to-do are collecting it. According to Lytwyn, mercury glass was first produced in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) and came to popularity in the 1850s. Contrary to its name, elemental mercury was not used to produce tableware. In fact, "silvered glass," an alternative title for mercury glass, better describes how it was produced.

In a bid to win Russian support for a U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe, the United States has proposed delaying its activation until there is concrete intelligence that Iran has long-range missiles, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday. Gates made the offer directly to senior Russian officials during a visit to Moscow last week. But he chose to publicize it in Prague, on the same day President Bush highlighted the threat of Iran's missile program, which the president said might enable Tehran to strike the U.S. mainland by 2015.

Kennebunkport, Maine -- President Bush accepted a proposal from Russian President Vladimir V. Putin yesterday to involve more European nations in negotiations over missile defense and to consider basing a controversial anti-missile radar system in southern Russia. However, two days of informal talks between the two presidents at the Bush family's seaside compound did not resolve their central disagreement over U.S. plans to install missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe, systems Russia considers a potential threat on its borders.

What to be skeptical about: the proposal by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to use a Russian radar site in Azerbaijan as an outpost of America's missile defense system. What to be even more skeptical about: America's missile defense system. Mr. Putin has been railing against plans by the Bush administration to install a radar station in the Czech Republic and 10 missile interceptors in Poland, which he portrays as provocations aimed more at Russia than at Iran or some other Middle Eastern nation.