CZECH IT OUT -- RADIO FREE EUROPE!

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, facing tight budgets and possible shutdown since the end of the Cold War, may breathe easier thanks to Czech President Vaclav Havel. Last night, President Clinton accepted Havel's offer to house the broadcasters in the former Czechoslovakian parliament building in Prague -- rent-free. The stations, based in Munich for four decades, said the move would shore up their 1,500 employees' morale, but TIME State Department correspondent J.F.O. McAllister says few really want to leave their comfortable German surroundings. The Czechs, he adds, are only too happy to import a prestigious Western operation, especially this one: "All the intellectuals really loved Radio FreeEurope (when the Soviet empire held sway throughout the region) -- it was their lifeline."parpar

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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