Bust to Havel to be unveiled in Council of Europe seat

Prague, Sept 22 (CTK) - A bust to former Czech and Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel will be unveiled in the seat of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on October 2, Marta Smolikova, director of the Vaclav Havel Library, told CTK Saturday.

The Vaclav Havel Library has funded the statue that was made by Lubomir Janecka.

The ceremony will be preceded by the lecture Vaclav Havel and Council of Europe by Martin Palous, director of the library' foreign programmes.

The ceremony, that will take place at the time of a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, will include an exhibition of ten large portraits from the cycle Leaving by painter Jiri Sozansky.

Leaving was one of the last dramas by playwright and writer Havel who also made a film of it one year before his death in 2011.

In early 2012, Council of Europe General Secretary Thornbjoern Jagland voiced the wish to install a bust of Vaclav Havel, a great European, man and statesman, at an honorable place in the Palace of Europe, Smolikova said.

Artifacts in the seat of the Council of Europe are donations from membership countries. The bust to Vaclav Havel will be the Czech Republic's gift to the Council of Europe.

"The relationship of Vaclav Havel and the Council of Europe was determined by shared attitudes to the defence of universal human rights and freedoms that stood at the emergence of the European institution and that are inseparably connected with the name of Vaclav Havel," Smolikova said.

The Council of Europe associates 474 countries, supporting cooperation of European countries in the sphere of protection of human rights, development of democracy, harmonisation of legal orders and environmental protection.