But perhaps we should all care at least a little, for what is happening in Belgium is unusual, but not at all unique. The Czechs and Slovaks already parted ways, as did the different nations of Yugoslavia.

We Czechs are 100 European, and were even when the Iron Curtain cut us off from democratic Europe. Indeed, our pro EU sentiments may be all the stronger because our membership in the Union, like our freedom, is so comparatively new.

But, above all, there is a deep sense among Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, and others, that they are Europeans. This is the very meaning of the word solidarity, as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary unity resulting from feelings and sympathies.

They were joined by Soviet prisoners of war, Roma, and almost 30 other nationalities Czechs, Slovaks, Belgians, Danes, French, Greeks and Dutch, and also German political prisoners, to name just a few of the nations who suffered in the camp.

It will fall to the Union, once again, to help transform despair into hope. We Czechs know something about this, as the wrenching economic transition that we underwent in the 1990 s taught us much about how the right policies can break the grip of hopelessness.

Perhaps these words sound exaggerated to cynical ears. But they clearly express the changes that Europe has witnessed over the past half century, changes for the good that all Czechs now want to secure for themselves, having been denied the fruits of European peace and prosperity for so long.

In August 1989, I proposed in the Polish Diet a draft resolution apologizing to the Czechs and Slovaks for Polish involvement in the 1968 invasion. I felt that a historical circle was being closed the ideas of the Polish March and the Prague Spring, the ideas of our mountain meetings, were becoming political facts.

Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek is an advocate of urgently needed reforms, but he lacks a parliamentary majority and is pressing for a fresh general election in the first half of 2007. With no means of stemming election year fiscal expansion, the Czechs, too, have been forced to abandon their 2010 target date for euro adoption.

There had been no census in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the war and there do not exist reliable indicators on the number of national minorities, but according to the census in 1991, within the framework of the law the following are mentioned Albanians, Montenegrins, Czechs, Italians, Jews, Macedonians, Germans, Pollacks, Russians, Roma, Romanians, Resins, Slovaks, Slovenians, Turks, Ukrainians.