Czech president in surprise trip to Afghanistan

The Czech Republic's President Milos Zeman made a surprise visit to Afghanistan in which he held talks with his counterpart Hamid Karzai and met a contingent of Czech soldiers, the presidency said today.
"The two presidents studied bilateral cooperation between the two countries as well as student exchanges," Zeman's spokesman Jiri Ovcacek told public television.
During the visit yesterday and today the two nations also signed a memorandum allowing for the first exhibition to take place at the Prague National Museum of Buddhist monuments discovered by Czech archeologists in Afghanistan, the Czech presidency said in a statement.
Zeman is the first Czech head of state to visit Afghanistan, where the country has had a military presence since 2002. NATO's combat mission currently counts 264 Czech soldiers.

The president, along with Defence Minister Vlastimil Picek and army chief of staff Petr Pavel, visited Czech soldiers based at the Kabul airport and in Bagram, 50 kilometres from the Afghan capital, said the statement.