Friends unveil commemorative plague to dissident Urbánek

Prague, Oct 21 (CTK) - Friends unveiled a commemorative plaque to Zdenek Urbanek, Czech writer, translator, university teacher and dissident, on the villa in Prague in which he lived on his 95th birthday anniversary and on the eve of the 16th international conference Forum 2000 Sunday.

The conference was initiated by former president Vaclav Havel. It brings together world thinkers, politicians, economists and clergymen. Urbanek was Havel's years-long friend.

Pavel Kohout, an initiator of the Charter 77 human rights platform, said "he fulfilled the role of his surrogate father."

Havel wrote once: "For decades I was giving my texts before their publication to my life-long friend, writer Zdenek Urbanek, for assessment."

Those who came to the place from which Charta 77 set out "on its historical journey" on January 6, 1977, which is written on the plaque, included former defence minister Lubos Dobrovsky, current Defence Minister Alexandr Vondra, Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, Havel's brother Ivan Havel, actor Pavel Landovsky, and others.

Charter 77 was an informal Czechoslovak civic initiative that criticised "political and state power" for the breach of human and civic rights at variance with the pledge Czechoslovakia made when it signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki in 1975.