Social Democrat executive body approves Paroubek's steps

The Central Executive Committee of the Social Democrats on Saturday unanimously approved the steps taken so far by party leader and outgoing prime minister Jiri Paroubek in post-election negotiations. The party body also authorised the Social Democrat leadership to hold talks next week with the emerging centre-right coalition of the Civic Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Greens about policy priorities and programme concessions.

Talks on the formation of a new government have been going on for some six weeks, since a national election resulted in a perfect split in the lower house of the Czech Parliament.