European Times: Prague

Czech gratitude fades as Radio Free Europe squats on prime real estate

Recent visitors to Prague have been rather alarmed to see three armoured personnel carriers positioned at the head of Wenceslas Square. Heavily armed soldiers stand glowering at tourists on their way to the state opera house.

They are even standing guard outside the building that used to house communist Czechoslovakia's rubber-stamp "parliament". It all looks rather worryingly as if the clock has been turned back to the bad old days when Soviet tanks tore up the streets of Prague in 1968.

They have been here ever since the 11 September attacks on America. The Czech government believes the old parliament building – a rather ugly, modernist, polished black slab surrounded by plate-glass extensions – is a probable target for the al-Qa'ida organisation of Osama bin Laden.

That is because ever since Czechoslovakia broke up, in the "Velvet Divorce" of 1992, the building has been home to Radio Free Europe (RFE), the US government-funded station that used to broadcast anti-communist propaganda from West Germany across the Iron Curtain. RFE was cherished by the dissident movement in Czechoslovakia.

At one time, illegal foreign radio broadcasts such as those of RFE were the only way some Czechs and Slovaks could hear about the writings of Vaclav Havel, who was then imprisoned and his works officially deleted from history.

After the fall of communism, the dissidents, led by Mr Havel, gained power. They presented RFE with the old communist parliament building in a grand gesture of gratitude. The station could base itself in the building that was once a symbol of one of the most hardline communist governments in Europe.

But now, in what may be a sign of the times, the RFE is to be booted out. To the dismay of radio executives, who say they have invested millions of dollars converting the building, the Czech government wants to move the station. RFE is facing a costly relocation and is engaged in negotiations, which have at times been acrid, over finding a suitable new location.

There was even talk of pulling the station out of the Czech Republic altogether in response, and the Hungarians quickly offered Budapest as an alternative host city. Radio executives now say that idea has been shelved and that they are staying in Prague. But RFE employees fear they will be moved out of the centre to some distant suburb. The authorities say the move is because of the threat from terrorism. It all goes back to a mysterious meeting that took place in Prague between Mohamed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to fly into the World Trade Centre, and an Iraqi embassy official. The Iraqi diplomat Ahmed al-Ani, who was subsequently expelled for spying, spent rather a lot of time hanging around the RFE building at the top of Wenceslas Square. The Czech authorities say that they fear an attack was being planned on the building.

But many here believe there is more to the authorities' eagerness to get RFE out. The station pays a symbolic rent of $1 a month. There are those in the Czech Republic who say grand gestures are all very well but that RFE is sitting pretty in a prime piece of real estate.

The RFE building is in about as good a location as you can get, just when property developers are hoping for a boom as the country prepares to join the EU. Radio Free Europe isn't happy – but it looks as if it will just have to go along with the move.