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Government leaders in the Czech Republic approved the opening of negotiations with the United States over the siting of a US missile defence system there, President Vaclav Klaus announced.
“I expressed my agreement with the fact that the State Security Council cleared negotiations to continue over this question,” Klaus told journalists after the meeting.
“This is purely a political decision, it is the debate within the two chambers of parliament that will be of crucial importance,” he said.
The Senate and the lower house must still approve the decision.
The State Security Council, composed of the prime minister and key ministers, oversees state security questions. The president, as the head of the armed forces, can take part in its meetings.
Washington has made an official request for the Czech Republic and Poland to play key roles in the expansion of its anti-missile protection system by siting a radar station and interceptor missiles on their soil.
The US, which already has a network of early warning satellites, radars and interceptor missiles in Alaska and California, wants to extend its defence umbrella to Europe by 2011 to deal with the threat of possible rocket attacks from Iran or North Korea.
Prague expects negotiations over details of a US site and a decision on whether to accept it to take around a year, rightwing Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said.
The deployment of the US missile shield in Central Europe would “not only reinforce the security of the Czech Republic but also its allies,” he said following Wednesday's meeting, adding that the US project is “strictly defensive” and in line with NATO plans.
Topolanek rejected as “out of the question” parallels made by opponents of the proposed US base with the occupation of Communist Czechoslovakia in August 1968 by Warsaw Pact forces.
“The occupation was imposed upon us from outside while this time it is a decision which we ourselves will make,” the head of the recently installed centre-right administration added.
Czech foreign and defence ministers are to create committees to pursue negotiations with the US while the interior ministry will weigh up the possible risks, Topolanek said.
President Klaus expects to raise the issue during talks with his Polish counterpart, Lech Kaczynski, on Thursday and with Russian President Vladimir Putin in April.
The Putin meeting will aim to quell Russian fears, expressed by top army officials in recent days, about a US anti-missile base being placed in Central Europe.
US assistant secretary for International Affairs, Paul Rosenzweig, said in Prague that Washington makes no direct linkage between Czech acceptance of the radar base and its attempts to win visa-free entry for its citizens to the US.
“This obviously stands apart but clearly obviously bears some relationship to the state of overall US-Czech relations,” he said.
The Czech Republic is one of 13 countries with which the US is working to reshape its visa requirements on the basis of agreements on improved bilateral security procedures.
