Prague - Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek will this week tour energy-rich states around the Caspian Sea as part of his role as president of the EU council, the EU office in Prague announced Wednesday.

Key topics under discussion will be cooperation, particularly in the field of energy. All three states on the Caspian Sea are involved in planning for a gas pipeline to Europe bypassing Russian supplies.

Prague  - Czech Premier Mirek Topolanek said Tuesday that he would prefer to avoid a media fight with French President Nicolas Sarkozy over European Union automobile industry policies.

"There's no reason for this kind of public exchange of blows in the media," said Topolanek, who currently holds the EU presidency, in an online interview.

France infuriated the Czechs and the Slovaks last week by suggesting that French carmakers should relocate their factories in eastern Europe to France.

Vienna - Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said he has doubts about Austria's proposal for an EU-sponsored package to rescue banks in Central and Eastern Europe, according to an interview with Austrian weekly News published Wednesday.

Austria's government last week called on CEE countries, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to expand current measures in order to prevent a credit crunch in the region.

Ostrava, Czech Republic - Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country chairs the European Union until June 30, called for a nuclear power revival in the wake of a gas crisis that left thousands of Eastern Europeans without heat in the midst of winter.

"Do we want sustainable energy supply with low (CO2) emissions? Then we cannot do without nuclear," Topolanek told an energy security conference in north-eastern Czech Republic.

While backing atomic power, Topolanek warned against reliance on "imported" sources of energy.

Ostrava, Czech Republic - The European Union is united on the natural gas pipelines its members aim to build in a bid to diversify bloc's supply and import routes, Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said Friday.

Piebalgs spoke of unity after German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked the 27-member bloc to support a Nord Stream pipeline, which would bring Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany.

Prague - Former Czech president Vaclav Havel was released from a Prague hospital on Thursday, nearly three weeks after he was admitted with a throat inflammation.

"His condition has improved so that we can release him to home care," said Martina Pelichovska, a member of the medical team that treated the former president.

The 72-year-old playwright underwent a minor throat operation on January 12, but phlegm subsequently clogged his weakened right lung.

The resulting pneumonia threatened Havel's life and he remained in intensive care during the entire hospital stay, doctors said Thursday.