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This week in Mailbox: Czech folk music on Radio Prague, General Frantisek Fajtl, BJ Prochazka's tour around the world, the 70th birthday of Vaclav Havel. Listeners quoted: Marty Sultan, Gina Hearn, Mike Talbot, Mike Safranek, Roger Coates, Lynda-Marie Hauptman, Mary Lou Krenek, David Eldridge.

Among the special guests at Vaclav Havel's Forum 2000 conference earlier this week was the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. But he didn't leave the Czech capital straight after the event. On Wednesday Czechs got a rare chance to see one of the world's most famous religious leaders in the flesh, when the Dalai Lama made an appearance at Sparta Prague basketball stadium. Emily Udell met some of the thousands who turned out for this unusual event.

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel has put forward the idea of a "global moral minimum" that could be adopted as a basis for the rules and norms of the coexistence of nations and supranational communities in the future world. Speaking at the Forum 2000 conference of world personalities in Prague on Monday, Mr Havel said he had already made several unsuccessful attempts at the creation of such a minimum and its adoption as a new official document, for instance on UN soil. This year, the annual conference focuses on the Dilemmas of Global Co-existence. Among the speakers are Belarusian opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich, Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, and Nobel Peace Prize laureates the Dalai Lama and US author Elie Wiesel.

American singer Joan Baez was the surprise guest at the opening ceremony of the Forum 2000 international conference on Sunday night. She flew to Prague to personally congratulate the conference's initiator Vaclav Havel on his 70th birthday. Linda Mastalir was there and spoke to the former advisor to Vaclav Havel and Forum 2000 Foundation Executive Director Oldrich Cerny about the surprise performance of the famous singer, who Vaclav Havel once called a great inspiration and influence in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution:

President Vaclav Klaus met with his predecessor Vaclav Havel at Lany Chateau, west of Prague, on Sunday afternoon. The two men and their wives had lunch at the presidential retreat to celebrate Vaclav Havel's birthday; he turned 70 on Thursday. Mr Havel received a replica of an office desk that once belonged to Czechoslovakia's first President Tomas Garrigue Masaryk.

Former Czech and Czechoslovak President, Vaclav Havel, is celebrating his 70th birthday on Thursday. Some one thousand people attended a private birthday party in Prague on Wednesday, including former Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski, playwright Tom Stoppard, Czech singer Karel Gott, and Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek. A former anti-communist dissident and playwright, Vaclav Havel was the country's first president after the fall of the communist regime and held the post until 2003.

Vaclav Havel, one of contemporary central Europe's best-known intellectuals is 70 years old. He was born on October 5th, 1936. A week of honours and celebrations in Prague will continue in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, on Friday, and in November all of Vaclav Havel's plays will be staged in New York City.

The country's first post-communist president Vaclav Havel celebrates his 70th birthday on Thursday, so this week he invited a few friends round to eat, drink and be merry. Just a few friends - around 1,000 - who queued up outside the medieval St Anne's Church in the Old Town - a deconsecrated building which is now home to Mr Havel's Prague Crossroads cultural centre. They were there to pay homage to the man who did so much to bring about the fall of communism, and so much in the first 13 years after it. Among the well-wishers was Monika Pajerova,

An exhibition has just opened in the Romanian Embassy in Prague, featuring over two dozen state honours received by former Czech president Vaclav Havel. The medals and honours are from 24 countries and were given to the former dissident and human rights activist in the period from 1989-2005. The exhibition will close on October 12. Vaclav Havel turns 70 this Thursday.

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel has been selected for this year's Gandhi Peace Prize for upholding human rights and world peace, the Indian Catholic wrote on Monday. The decision was taken by a five-member jury chaired by India's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and including the opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, the Chief Justice of India, a former president and former prime minister. The prize is awarded every year for outstanding work and contribution to social, economic and political transformation through non-violence and other Gandhian methods. The former Czech president, playwright, and human rights activist will celebrate his 70th birthday on Thursday.