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Czech Radio Free Europe Closes Down
Monday, September 30, 2002
The Associated Press

RFE/RL currently provides 10 1/2 hours of broadcasts to Afghanistan daily and plans to expand programming to 12 hours soon. The radio currently broadcasts in 34 languages, including 18 to Muslim populations and plans to broadcast in the Kurdish language to listeners in northern Iraq are currently being discussed.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- AP
The Czech service of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty closed down Monday after 52 years of broadcasting, officials said.

RFE broadcasting into then-communist Czechoslovakia had supplied uncensored information since 1951 despite efforts by authorities to jam the station's signal.

After the 1989 anti-communist revolution. RFE broadcasts continued in cooperation with Czech public radio.

Before halting Czech-language programming, broadcasts in Hungarian were stopped in 1993 and in Polish in 1997. But spokeswoman Sonia Winter said broadcasts to Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, the South Slavic Languages service and the Albanian service are still on, and there are no plans to discontinue them.
(More: The Macon Telegraph News Source)
2002 © The Associated Press.

Dan