The Austrian leader, Wolfgang Schussel, has praised a plan by his Czech
counterpart Jiri Paroubek to make a conciliatory gesture towards Sudeten
Germans who did not support the Nazi regime. Speaking after a meeting
between the two men in Vienna on Thursday, Mr Schussel said it was
important that for the first time the principle of collective guilt was
not being applied to the German minority. An estimated 2.5 million Germans
were expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II.
Mr Paroubek has not yet revealed exactly what kind of gesture he is
planning. But the idea has already been rejected by Slovakia's prime
minister, Mikulas Dzurinda, and a Sudeten German group in Austria.