Czech mates

The Czech president, Vaclav Havel, says Slovakia should be invited to join the NATO alliance at its summit in Prague late next year.

After talks with the Slovak president, Rudolph Schuster, who is visiting the Czech republic, Mr Havel also said he believed the Czechs and the Slovaks should join the European Union at the same time.

The BBC Prague Correspondent says Mr Havel's comments reflect the much-improved state of relations between the two countries, which split amid a wave of Slovak nationalism in 1993.

Slovakia was excluded from the first wave of NATO's eastward expansion two years ago, when it was lead by the nationalist Vladimir Meciar.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service