A decision by the Czech government to suspend government consultations with Slovakia over policy differences regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine drew a sharp response from Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico on Thursday.
"We should not jeopardize relations between Slovaks and Czechs for reason of vanity or on account of certain aims that have nothing in common with Czech-Slovakian coexistence," the Czech News Agency (ČTK) reported Fico as saying.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala's liberal conservative Cabinet suspended inter-government consultations with its eastern neighbour on Wednesday evening. Fiala noted starkly differing attitudes to certain foreign policy issues.
The differences were apparent at the latest summit of the Visegrád Group in Prague on February 27. While Fiala termed Russia an aggressor and said he did not believe in "pacifist solutions," Fico said that only "an immediate ceasefire will create the space for immediate negotiations on certain compromises and agreements."
After Fico took office in October at the head of a leftist-nationalist government, Slovakia halted state arms supplies to Ukraine. The Czech government, by contrast, has backed Ukraine.
There are close cultural, economic and family ties between the two neighbours, which formed a single country – Czechoslovakia – until their peaceful separation on January 1, 1993.
