The President is coming...

I just left our daily editorial meeting where it was announced that President George W. Bush will be visiting Radio Free Europe during his upcoming visit to the Czech Republic. He will be here in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 5th, and will give a speech to our staff in our Hall of the People - where the former Czechoslovak parliament used to convene (our building is the former Czechoslovak parliament building). Also in attendance here will be members of an international dissdent conference being held in Prague from 4-6 June. Information on that conference is below. While I imagine that the security for this visit will be horrendous, it is very exciting news. I'm glad I came to work here.

From the web site abcprague.com:

Prague will host an international conference on “Democracy and Security: Core Values and Sound Policies” attended by leading dissidents, human rights activists, academics and world leaders. Its aim is to discuss the importance of democracy and to find the ways how to promote it in totalitarian regimes.

The conference is an initiative of three people concentrating on human rights and democracy – human right activist and political leader Natan Sharansky, former president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel and former Prime Minister of Spain Jose Maria Aznar.

The conference, scheduled for 4th – 6th June 2007 in Prague, is hosted by the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center, the Prague Security Studies Institute and the Foundation for Social Analysis and Studies in Madrid. One of the speakers at the conference will be the U.S. President George W. Bush.