Prague - Czechs will be able to travel to the United States without visas from November 17, a symbolic day that marks the collapse of communism in the former Czechoslovakia, a senior US official said Monday.

Announcing the date at a press conference in Prague, US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff called the step a sign of Czech Republic's progress after the end of the Cold War.

November 17 marks the 19th anniversary of a student march that led to the peaceful fall of communism in then Czechoslovakia, known as the Velvet Revolution.

Czechs have been long frustrated by the US visa requirements, seen as costly and cumbersome. Their annoyance reached new highs when the visa requirement stayed in place even after their country entered the European Union in 2004.

The US visa policy created an inequality within the enlarged European Union as most old EU members and ex-communist Slovenia did not need visas to travel to the United States.

Washington is currently also adding six more countries to the so- called visa waiver programme - Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and South Korea. (dpa)