Jan Kaczmarek receives Academy Award for best score in 'Finding Neverland'
4.3.2005 - Michal Kubicki

This year's Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles was followed with bated breath in Poland. The hopes of Polish film fans were set on the movie Finding Neverland, and they were not disappointed.

Mark Foster's story of Peter Pan writer J.M.Barrie received as many as seven Oscar nominations. Its only award went to...

"Jan P. Kaczmarek for 'Finding Neverland'. This is the first Academy award and nomination for Jan A.P. Kaczmarek."

Jan Kaczmarek was evidently moved when receiving the Oscar statuette:

"I cannot tell you how happy I am, and thank you Academy. 'Finding Neverland' was a great adventure and I'm so proud to be part of it. Mark Foster, he should be here. Mark, thank you for your subtle mind, for your incredible talent."

Since settling in the United States 16 years ago, Jan Kaczmarek has had many successes to hisname, features such as Washington Square by his compatriot Agnieszka Holland and Unfaithful by Adrian Lyne to name but a few. But to music critic Roman Rogowiecki, the Oscar is of course the highest accolade for a composer of film music:

"This is the pinnacle, but I hope it's not the only one, the last one, because the guy's on the rise, I would say. He's really making progress, and I was quite surprised that he got it. Because I figured that maybe 'The Passion of the Christ", as it wasn't really nominated in so many categories, that politically Hollywood people will give it at least the award for its music which is very provocative, and it really goes to your heart. And suddenly, this is for Kaczmarek who did a beautiful score, I think, I was really surprised when I went to see the movie that it was such a joyous score because he usually writes very dark music and usually it's a bit depressing, to be honest. And then suddenly, because maybe the story of the guy who was a bit of a Peter Pan himself, just suggested to him just write something more playful. So, I think that the music fantastically fits the movie".

52 year old Jan Kaczmarek has a degree in law but soon after graduation he abandoned his planned career as a diplomat and focused on music. He first made a name for himself writing incidental music for the theatre. Having moved to America, he directed multimedia shows and worked for theatre companies before skyrocketing to fame, Hollywood-style. Music critic Roman Rogowiecki:

"What Kaczmarek did was prove that hard work pays off. And it's a bit like an American, you know, going from boot polisher to millionaire. I think, now he's going to be quite wealthy, he's going to have lots of offers, he's going to do fine. But, I think, it's not going to change him as a musician, and as a person. So, I think, it's a typical Hollywood story and he deserved it. And he did work very hard for that."

Kaczmarek makes frequent visits to his native Poland. Most recently, he set up a foundation which is to help young artists in their careers. His Oscar is the tenth time the Academy has awarded a Pole. Past recipients of the award include Roman Pola?ski and Andrzej Wajda. The latter received an Oscar five years ago for a lifetime achievement in cinema.

Uncertain future of Russian oil giant leaves Slovakia worried about the fate of Transpetrol oil
4.3.2005 - Anca Dragu

The problems of the bankrupt Russian oil giant Yukos are creating headaches for some of Central Europe's energy companies. Yukos had stakes in a number of oil companies in this region including Slovakia's Transpetrol. Now it seems that two Russian companies are interested in buying the Yukos stake. But given the turmoil around Yukos - will Slovaks welcome another Russian investor?

Slovak politicians tried to be very polite to Vladimir Putin during his two day visit to Slovakia in February. They tried not to mention sensitive topics such as human rights in Russia or the situation of the oil giant, Yukos. The company owns a 49 percent stake in the Slovak company Transpetrol and many wonder what will happen to these shares. However, Putin felt obliged to give a straight answer to journalists' questions on the topic:

"There are two companies interested in acquiring the stake in question. One of them is Tatneft. Of course the Russian side must respect the decisions of the Slovak authorities concerning the fate of Transpetrol because the Slovak state controls 51 percent of the company. Anyway Russia will continue to export oil and gas to Slovakia no matter what happens to this company."

In 2002 the Slovak government sold the 49 percent stake in Transpetrol to Yukos for 74 million US dollars. After the oil giant got into trouble Slovaks began thinking of buying back the shares. Equity analyst Martin Kristofcak explains why the current situation at Transpetrol is complicated:

"Actually from the operational point of view it may be irrelevant for near future, because Transpetrol has proved that it can quickly switch to alternative Russian oil sources in case it encounters difficulties. In the long term the current situation is dangerous because it affects the market value of the company"

However, Kristofcak says that the privatization agreement signed with Yukos forbids it from selling any shares for a period of five years. Yukos reacted to Putin's comments by saying it hadn't planned to sell its stake in Transpetrol to any Russian company. The Slovak daily SME has lately run a series of articles pointing to the fact that Tatneft, the company that Putin mentioned, has already started negotiations with unnamed Slovak state officials in Bratislava.

The prime minister and top economic ministers denied knowing anything about such secret talks. Tatneft is the sixth biggest Russian crude oil producer. Many people in Slovakia don't really like the fact that it is a state controlled company. However, analysts like Martin Kristofcak say such worries are not justified as Russian businessmen have improved considerably their way of doing business.

Is Central Europe too dependent on Russian energy?
4.3.2005 - Kerry Skyring

With the Visegrad countries - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, importing most of their crude oil and natural gas requirements from Russia, is Central Europe too dependent on Russian energy?

During the past decade, the Visegrad countries have diversified their energy supplies to reduce this dependence by connecting national oil and natural gas networks to Western Europe. But Western Europe is also a big buyer of energy from Russia. Manouchehr Takin, an analyst at the Centre for Global Energy studies in London, says as time goes on Central Europe will have more alternatives...

"There are other suppliers to Europe and there would be negotiations and in effect competition between North African suppliers of gas, which already are major suppliers and Russia as well as resources in Norway that are being developed. So, it is not only a monopoly or a great leverage. The Russians could, in theory, exert greater pressure but I doubt it because these negotiations would be at the same time that the European purchasers are having negotiations with others."

Are you concerned about the way that Yukos was re-nationalised, that a company that was probably Russia's most transparent company was rolled over and now has been put back in state hands?

"I do share that concern. It is the view of many people in the oil and gas industry internationally and of all the publications that one reads. But from the Russian side, they have a more nationalistic view and that really is supported by the general population. But we do think the recent announcements in the last month, that foreign ownership of these Russian companies should be less than fifty percent, are a limitation of the free market...but they have a legitimate concern as a sovereign state."

What about countries of Central Europe, which might be overly dependent on Russian gas? Should they be thinking about alternatives?

"I think a diversified source of supply would be costly. Countries that are neighbours of Russia and are next to the pipeline system coming from Russia would find it very costly. But the more Europe comes together and has a network of energy in the same way that it has a network for electricity, the more they will be able to feed into each other and overall could have a diversity of supply.

"At present, the central and eastern European countries are very much dependent [on Russian oil]. This is not a bad thing, it is the reality of business, and gradually with the free market and the European Union expanding and having the strength they would have a stronger negotiating power to work on the next phase of the deals that they make with the Russians."

Hunger strike draws attention to Slovenia's problematic citizenship law
4.3.2005 - Ksenija Samardzija-Matul

About ten days ago a hunger strike in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana drew attention to the problems of people who have become known as "the erased." They are the 18,000 people from the former Yugoslavia - mostly Serbs, Croats and Bosnians - who were simply erased from the record books. They were living in Slovenia when it declared independence from Yugoslavia.

So, how could so many people be erased from the register of residents in Slovenia? They did not apply for citizenship within a prescribed period after Slovenia's independence in 1991 but they had their legal residence in Slovenia and were entitled to continue their life in Slovenia - although from that time on as foreigners. However, a year later the Ministry of Interior erased them from the register of permanent residents in Slovenia, without saying a word to those concerned. Through this, they lost their health insurance, their jobs and could not look for a new one as their passports and other documents were destroyed. Eleven years later, the Constitutional court declared this deletion illegal, and ordered the immediate retroactive return of their status. But not much has happened since the ruling; the legal adviser of the association of the erased residents in Slovenia and former judge of the Constitutional court Matevz Krivic:

"In Slovenia, something totally incredible for a democratic country with a rule of law is happening: the current right-wing government is directly rejecting the fulfilment of more decisions of the Constitutional court, made in favour of the rights of over 18.000 "erased" former Yugoslav citizens. And even worse: the right-wing politicians are demanding even the resignation of the ombudsman who insists on immediate fulfilment of the decisions of the Constitutional court, and the government is also totally ignoring the identical warnings of the Commissioner of the Council of Europe for human rights Alvaro Gil Robles."

Views on how to achieve the fulfilment of their rights differ among the erased and a small group, which has other ideas of achieving their rights compared to the majority of the erased, decided to go on a five - day hunger strike and they demanded to talk to a delegation of members of parliament and the head of the delegation of the European Commission in Slovenia Erwan Fouere. The strike ended after three days, when politicians promised to find a solution. Another reason the strike was actually started was to gain media attention. Slovenia's Prime Minister Janez Jansa made clear that his government is going to resolve the issue of the erased only through a special Constitutional act, if he gets the necessary majority in parliament. If not he will postpone the resolution of this problem:

"The government is now trying to by-pass illegally these juridical decisions by preparing a special "Constitutional Law on the Erased" - although the president of the Constitutional court warned publicly that such an attempt is not allowed and will fail. And the left-wing opposition also declared very clearly that it will not participate in such a shameful attempt to violate the basic principles of the rule of law - and European values at the same time."

At the 13th anniversary of the illegal deletion in February the association of the erased residents of Slovenia made a public appeal to the Slovenian and European authorities and also filed a formal petition to the European Parliament and as Matevz Krivic puts it:

"The expected help from outside remains now almost our only hope."

International Democracy Centre in Budapest to help countries' peaceful transition to democracy
4.3.2005 - Sandor Laczko

The knowledge and experience gained during the peaceful transition from communism to democracy in Central and Eastern European countries is to be brought together in Budapest. The International Democracy Center, as it will be called, could start its work as early as this year.

Former diplomat Istvan Gyarmati has prepared the feasibility study for the Hungarian foreign minister and spoke to Radio Budapest...

"The idea came from conversations at home, in the United States, Poland and in some other countries. There is already an initiative called the Community of Democracies that exists between states and we talked to them and the idea came about that there is a lot of experience in the transition countries, not only the former Communist countries, that could be used in other places."

And what are the main findings of the feasibility study that you have been asked to prepare?

"Well, we basically determined what the structure would be, what the task would be, how we would do it, how much it would cost. So it was more of a technical feasibility study rather than a substantive one because substantive work has to be done after the centre is established."

How much willingness is there on the part of the Hungarian government or Hungarian organisations to host this centre?

"The government would be very happy to host this centre so we have the full cooperation of the government and we also cooperate with large parts of the non-governmental institutions, both other political parties and personalities that are not in the government because we don't want this to be a governmental or a socialist or a liberal, or conservative organisation. Democracy has many faces - conservative, socialist, liberal, and so on. So, we don't want to commit ourselves to only one of them."

What is the basic aim of this centre?

"The two basic aims are to collect experience by interviewing those who were fundamental in the creation of democracy and by studying the experience gained in the different transition countries and also to find out if and what is usable of that experience, from Chile to Hungary and from Poland to South Korea, in other countries in the Middle East and Africa, or parts of Asia."

You also mentioned that financing was one of the points in the feasibility study. How much would this cost and where is the money coming from?

"It depends on what we do. It can be a smaller operation or a bigger one depending on whether we will have a smaller or bigger budget. We want to have an independent institution so we are thinking of creating an endowment, which would produce the revenues every year independently of the good will of the government that is in power at the time. We think that the money would basically come from private business foundations and some governments, who have been traditionally involved in democracy support, such as the Scandinavian, Canadian, German, British, and US governments."

Who do you intend to present with the stories and eyewitness accounts that you gather?

"Well, it depends. The audience could be governments that are willing to embark on the path to transition, non-governmental organisations that in cooperation or in opposition to the government want to launch the transition, or any other institutions that are intending or doing work in the transition in whatever countries. "

And for how long do you plan to work on this project?

"Until all countries are democracies. So, I think for a very long time."

American basketball player takes Czech citizenship to play for national team
4.3.2005 - Ian Willoughby

An African-American basketball player called Maurice Whitfield recently received a Czech passport; he has become a Czech citizen in order to play for the country's international team, after already leading his club Nymburk to success in the national basketball league. Radio Prague's Ian Willoughby caught up with Maurice Whitfield this week, and asked him how he was finding life in the Czech Republic.

"I'm loving it. I have a lot of friends here, I've met a lot of new people. My teammates are like family to me, so I'm having a very nice time here. I'm having lots of fun, I'm learning something new every day. I'm studying the language - it's just like being in college again."

Tell us about the language - how good is your Czech?

"I don't know how good it is. I can have a short conversation and I can understand more than I speak. In a few months I'll be very comfortable, because I'm studying hard."

How do you communicate with your teammates at Nymburk?

"Most of my teammates speak English, and they understand my Czech; since they've been around me so long they understand my broken Czech. So that's how I communicate: through my broken Czech and their broken English."

Before 1989 black people were quite in this country, especially outside Prague. You live in a small town called Podebrady - have you had any negative experiences, or how have you found being a black man in the Czech Republic?

"I haven't had any negative experiences, especially in Podebrady everyone accepts me, I've been living there for the last four years, three years, so I know mostly everyone in the stores and things like that."

What about the Czech mentality? How do you find Czech people?

"It's hard to break old habits, that's how I look at it. So I just accept everybody for who they are and what they do. Everyone is different and I just accept their differences. On the basketball court I speak with some of the players about their mentality and I try to change their mentality. Basically it's been a good experience for me, but if they're stuck in their ways I just have to accept them. I can't change who they are and I don't want to change who they are."

Recently you've received a lot of attention here in the Czech Republic because you took out Czech citizenship. Could you tell us about that and how you decided to become a Czech citizen?

"A friend of mine was telling me that if you're here for a certain number of years you can get Czech citizenship, and that would also help their national basketball team. All my friends play on the national team so I just decided to give it a shot, and fortunately everything worked out and I'm very happy about that."

Was it a hard choice for you to make? And I should also ask you: do you still have American citizenship or did you lose it?

"No, I still have my American citizenship. I don't know if it was a hard process because I had a lot of help, but it was just a long process for me."

Do you know of any similar cases of say American basketball players taking the citizenship of European countries, or is your case extremely unusual?

"No, it happens a lot. I was actually offered Croatian citizenship when I played in Croatia but I declined. It happens a lot, because of the simple fact you can help their basketball team, help their country and things like this. So it's very popular."

Have you appeared yet for the Czech Republic's national basketball team?

"No, I just received the passport a couple of weeks ago. There's no hundred percent guarantee that I will play, though I intend on playing. I have to speak with the coaches, and meet with the players before anything is definite."

What does the future hold for Maurice Whitfield?

"I'm not sure, I'm just living day to day. No-one's promised tomorrow, and when tomorrow comes I'll just live it to the fullest."