The opening of Forum 2000 once again in the Prague Crossroads
As is now traditional, the Forum 2000 Foundation began its three-day conference at the Prague Crossroads. The meeting was opened by President Václav Havel who is the patron of this event. The official theme of this year’s 12th meeting was “Openness and fundamentalism in 21st century”. In his speech, however, President Václav Havel restated the main theme of the conference as “Obsession and an analysis of its causes, manifestations and consequences”.
The event was attended by representatives of the opposition from Russia and Byelorussia, Gary Kasparov and Aljaksander Milinkevich, the Polish journalist Adam Michnik, the economist Jan Švejnar or one of the original initiators of the Forum 2000, the Japanese philanthropist Yohei Sasakawa. The Dalai Lama, who was invited to this year and had attended the conference in previous years, sent his apologies.