Minister approves bodyguards for president-elect's daughter

Prague, Feb 1 (CTK) - Interior Minister Jan Kubice has decided to provide security guards for Czech President-Elect Milos Zeman's daughter, Interior Ministry spokesman Vladimir Repka told CTK Friday.

Kubice previously said he would most probably nod to the respective proposal of the police whom Zeman asked for his daughter Katerina's protection.

Along with Zeman, his wife Ivana has received bodyguards, deputy police president Tomas Kuzel said.

The president elect is now protected by policemen and not by a private security agency, he added.

"The minister has approved it (protection of Katerina Zemanova) on the basis of my request and we will now only communicate the protection intensity with the family members," Kuzel said, adding that Zeman's daughter has already been protected "in a certain way" now.

Zeman will be sworn-in on March 8.

Kuzel also said the form of Zeman's protection should change after his inauguration.

Apart from the police, Zeman was protected by the Sub S.A. private security agency that Kubice co-owned in the past, but it does not guard him any longer, agency owner Hynek Vlas told Lidove noviny daily.

Zeman in the past sharply criticised the behaviour of President Vaclav Klaus's bodyguards after an airsoft gun attack on him last September, calling it amateurish.

Former socialist prime minister Zeman, 68, won the January 25-26 presidential runoff with 54.8 percent of the vote, having defeated Foreign Minister and government TOP 09 chairman Karel Schwarzenberg, 75.

After the election, Zeman had a three-day rest in his flat in the country, in Nove Veseli in the Vysocina Bohemian-Moravia Highlands. He returned to Prague on Thursday.