Canadian PM indicates Ottawa would have to react if asylum application numbers keep rising

On the sidelines of an EU-Canada summit on Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper discussed the issue of Czech asylum seekers in his country with his Czech counterpart, Mirek Topolánek. The latter told reporters that Mr Harper had said the Czech Republic was beginning to breach one of the conditions under which Ottawa had granted Czechs visa free status, namely that the number of asylum applicants was getting too high. The Canadian leader said if there was no improvement in this respect, his country would have to react. In the first three months of this year over 650 Czech citizens, many of them from the country’s Romany minority, have applied for asylum in Canada. Ottawa dropped visa requirements for Czechs in 2007, a decade after introducing them following a wave of asylum seekers.