Czech Defense Minister Zuna Set for China Trip — Skips Parliamentary Defense Committee for the Second Time in a Month

Czech Defense Minister Jiří Zuna is preparing to attend a conference in China, and as a result will miss the parliamentary defense committee meeting for the second time in a row. This was reported by committee chairman Jan Flek.

"We were supposed to hold a committee meeting on September 1, but the minister apologized due to a trip abroad, so in agreement with the presidium we didn't convene it and rescheduled it for the next regular date — September 15. We're now gradually hearing that the minister will once again apologize and skip the upcoming meeting," Flek said.

According to information he received from the Ministry of Defense, Zuna is expected to travel to an unspecified conference in China. The editorial team is still awaiting comment from the ministry itself. Zuna is currently on a working trip to Dublin.

Irritation Even Within the Coalition

Flek, who chairs the Chamber of Deputies' defense committee, intends to seek clarification about the trip. At the committee meeting — whose date has already been postponed once — lawmakers had planned to discuss the ministry's budget, upcoming expenditures, and army modernization with the minister.

"We will pursue this, because even our coalition colleagues, the deputy chairs, are outraged. I could understand it if this were a trip to the White House, but the fact that he's going to China, when the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Tokio Okamura, was just there recently — that I simply don't understand," Flek said.

The Trip Is Not on the Government's Flight Schedule

Details about the nature of the conference Minister Zuna plans to attend have not been disclosed. The trip is also absent from the schedule of government flights approved by the cabinet. The latest updated schedule of foreign trips was published last week and lists flights through November — yet the defense minister's September trip to China is nowhere to be found on it.

Flek believes NATO itself might take an interest in the purpose of the visit. "If two foreign trips within a single month are headed to China, and we're talking about the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and the Minister of Defense, then as a representative of a NATO member state, I certainly wouldn't be pleased about that," he stressed. "I see this as a security risk," the politician warned.

Source: novinky.cz