Prague / Czech Rep. (RNN Agency) 12.05.1998

Czech President Vaclav Havel on Monday pardoned two Roma men who were charged for attacking far-right Republican Party Chairman Miroslav Sladek during a weekend party meet ing, a presidential spokesman said.

Sladek and three of his party colleagues suffered light injuries when attacked by several Roma at a party campaign meeting in the northern Czech town of Novy Bor, police said.

Two men, Jan Tancos and Josef Tancos, were charged with assault in the incident, but Havel's spokesman Ladislav Spacek said the president used his amnesty power to set them free. Spacek did not give any reason for Havel's decision, which can be enacted unilaterally by presidential decree. Local media quoted Roma at the scene of the attack as saying Sladek had been provocative, disparaging Roma as well as Prime Minister Josef Tosovsky, Havel and his wife, Dagmar. Police fired warning shots to br eak up the crowd, which the party said included about 100 Roma who stormed the meeting.

The Republicans, who won eight percent support in a 1996 general election and are expected to win seats again in June's poll, have targeted the Roma community in their campaign.

Both Havel and the government have called on Czechs to improve relations with Roma, a community numbering in the hundreds of thousands, among whom unemployment is commonly 60 percent compared with a national average ten percent.

Sladek, a doctor of philosophy who has been one of the most controversial figures since the fall of Communism in 1989, was acquitted on charges of spreading racial hatred in January after spending 17 days in custody on remand.

Sladek was widely reported to have shouted that it was a "pity we killed only a few Germans during the war" at a demonstration in January 1997 outside a hall where prime ministers signed a bilateral declaration on Czech-German relations.

A district court ruled that Sladek's statements did not violate Czech law when taken in the full context of his speech.

Havel narrowly won re-election by parliament in January for a final five-year term in a vote which the Republicans refuse to accept because Sladek, a declared candidate for president, was still in jail awaiting trial.

Havel routinely excludes Republicans and Communists from invitations to meetings with parliamentary parties.