Press Release

Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and Czech Republic Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek
Joint Press Availability
Washington, D.C.

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SECRETARY GUTIERREZ: Good morning. I’d like to welcome Minister. Topolanek to Washington to the Commerce Department, this is his first meeting. We had some very fruitful discussions about ways to continue to enhance our commercial relationship, continue to trade more, continue to create jobs, continue to create prosperity for our two countries.

I especially want to thank the Prime Minister, and really the Czech Republic and the president for their leadership in their stance for human rights and for freedom, and very importantly what they have done to shine a spotlight on the plight of the Cuban people. And we believe that this is very much a time to shine a spotlight on the plight of political prisoners in Cuba. The fact that there are political prisoners right now who are starving to death in jail under very difficult conditions who don’t have medical attention simply for having spoken their mind and for having had a different view than the regime. We also know that the plight of Cuban people is very difficult they live under oppression; they live in constant fear, something that our friends in the Czech Republic know well because they too lived through the tyranny of communism. So, I want to thank the Prime Minister again and his country for their leadership, they have provided. I think they have provided great courage and they are a great role model for the rest of the world, and we stand with them in our support of the Cuban people in their quest to gain freedom and to gain human rights that some many people around the world deserve and enjoy.

Mr. Prime Minister, thank you and I would like to give the Prime Minister something that I wear, which is a “cambio” bracelet, which also Cuban dissidents on the island wear and I should say that there have been students who have been arrested for wearing this bracelet which simply says “change”. Quite incredibly that someone can be arrested for believing in the word change but Prime Minister I hope you wear this and thank you very much.

PRIME MINISTER TOPOLANEK (via translator): Thank you thank you.

Well I’m thinking of those very powerful words mentioned by the Secretary and perhaps just to summarize what we have been discussing, we have been going through our mutual trading relations; we have been talking about how to diversify it. In the past few years, after the Czech Republic succession into the EU, we saw a much more diversified and also a much more complex export and import exchange with more added value and also more focus on research and development.

We also want to continue this trend, we’d like to further enhance it and therefore we are eminently interested in the exchange of mutual information, experience and also innovation.

We could not but discuss and mention the WTO-related issues, especially further liberalization of trade and commerce on a global scale.

We were also discussing the Trans-Alantic Corporation especially within the context of TEC (Transatlantic Economic Council) we also expressed our firm stance, position, that we believe it should continue because it is further strengthening and enhancing the overall Euro-Atlantic bond.

In the light of the Czech Republic’s upcoming presidency in the European Union in 2009, we were also discussing the appropriations of the mutual summit between the EU and United States of America.

And just to follow up on what has already been mentioned by the Secretary, we were discussing the situation in Cuba, also we were discussing the Czech Republic’s involvement in promoting the values of human rights in Cuba and also the Czech Republic’s participation in the strife or fight against Castro’s regime, be it Fidel’s or Raul’s, which I have clearly explained for me it is all the same. We believe that we should clearly distinguish between trading of commercial or corporation and issues of such high importance as the protection of human values, human lives and human rights

I believe that in terms of enhancing trade and commerce, the best way to go forward is to abolish any possible barriers, but in terms of human rights we have to adopt a common stance, a unified stance. That is, actually, the main message I wanted to deliver to the Secretary.

QUESTION: Are you proposing any new initiatives to promote or increase trade between the two countries?

SECRETARY GUTIERREZ: Well we are. We talked about potentially some R&D (research and development) cooperation and being able to share and collaborate in the areas of R&D. We know that our two way trade is a little over three billion dollars which is a lot of money but we know it can be a lot more, so we believe that there are opportunities to increase our exports and to increase two-way trade, and also to increase investments. We are going to explore avenues in that regard. The Prime Minister did mention the Trans-Atlantic dialogue which we believe is a very good forum to discuss commercial issues in a multilateral sense but there is no question that between the Czech Republic and the U.S. there are opportunities to expose more investors to the Czech Republic, to expose business people to each other so that we can take that 3.2 billion dollars that we are doing today and make it a lot bigger. We believe it should be bigger and we believe there is a lot of room to grow

QUESTION: Speaking about the Czech Republic and the United States of America (in audible) on the issue of embargo, did you touch on this and what was the discussion?

SECRETARY GUTIERREZ: We did talk about it and we focused on those areas where we have agreement, and where we agree passionately is in our support of the Cuban people and our belief that political prisoners should be released; that people should not be in a jail starving without medical attention because they simply expressed a point of view that is different to the that of the regime. So, we talked primarily in those areas where we have full agreement, and that is what we spent our time focused on.

PRIME MINISTER TOPOLANEK: I don’t really have anything else to add on this, thank you very much.