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On Thursday night a gala performance in honour of President Vaclav Havel took place at the National Theatre in Prague. The event was organised by First Lady Dagmar Havlova as a goodbye tribute to the outgoing president, who leaves office on Sunday, February 2.

President Vaclav Havel has joined seven other European leaders in signing an article published in major European dailies on Thursday supporting US President George W. Bush's stance on Iraq. In the letter, initiated by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, the leaders of Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain said the Iraqi regime and its weapons of mass destruction represented a clear threat to world security. Among the signatories, Vaclav Havel is the only president, the rest are prime ministers of their respective countries. The representatives of France and Germany did not sign the article.

Czech President Vaclav Havel has received the highest honour of the Slovak state on his last official visit to Slovakia; Mr Havel was given the honour Wednesday by the Slovak President Rudolf Schuster, who praised Havel as being one of the most important figures of modern Czech and Slovak history. Vaclav Havel is stepping down as president of the Czech Republic on February 2nd, after 13 years in office. Just before his departure for Slovakia Wednesday Mr Havel stressed the particular symbolic importance of this last visit: both Slovakia and the Czech Republic formed a common state in 1918, but split peacefully into separate countries in 1993. Mr Havel, now 66, was Czechoslovakia's only post-communist president from late 1989 until his resignation in mid-1992, a few months before the break-up of the federation.

Five days before he steps down, President Vaclav Havel played host to Polish President Aleksandr Kwasniewski and Austrian President Thomas Klestil on Tuesday. The two visiting presidents and their wives had lunch at a Prague restaurant with Mr Havel and his wife Dagmar. Also on Tuesday, Mr Havel appointed Jiri Mucha a constitutional court judge, the president's last such appointment before he steps down on Sunday after 13 years in office. On Wednesday Mr Havel is due to visit the Slovak capital Bratislava, on what will be his last foreign trip as president of the Czech Republic.

President Vaclav Havel met senior German politicians, including Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and President Johannes Rau, on a visit to Berlin on Friday. Mr Havel also presented Czech state decorations to five people who had worked to improve Czech-German relations, including two Sudeten Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II. President Havel steps down on February 2 after 13 years in office.

Both houses of parliament met on Wednesday morning to elect a successor to President Vaclav Havel, who steps down in two and a half weeks time. While it was not at all certain who would win, one thing has been clear for some time - whoever succeeds Mr Havel will have a hard act to follow, particularly on the international stage.

One of the most controversial aspects of Vaclav Havel's presidency has been his use of the presidential power to pardon. Mr Havel has pardoned around 2,000 people, with some of those cases drawing a great deal of criticism. Now - as his term comes to an end - the president has been defending his actions. In an interview in the weekly newspaper Respekt published today, Mr Havel says that pardons are a question of personal conscience that essentially cannot be discussed. On the other hand, he believes that the power is a leftover from the days of

In this week's Insight Central Europe, we look at how outgoing Czech president Vaclav Havel is viewed by his countrymen, thirteen years after he first came to power. In Bratislava a new art exhibition called "The Dark Ages" reflects the mood of 1970s and 80s Slovakia, when an end to the communist era was not in sight. Referenda on membership are being held in several European Union candidate

Vaclav Havel has been saying a lot of goodbyes lately, as he prepares to step down on February 2nd after 13 momentous years as president. It is expected that he and his wife Dagmar will spend a lot of time at their holiday home in Portugal, where Mr Havel has said he plans to write again, read a lot and enjoy a climate relatively favourable to his chronic breathing problems. But won't it be hard for President Havel to give up the reins of power after such a long period in office? I asked Jiri Pehe, who has been an advisor to Mr Havel for some years,

Yes, everybody's talking about the presidential election. Or are they not? The press reports on it daily and Czech television stations even go as far as visiting the official presidential candidates in their own homes to introduce them to the public. But has that been enough to get the average Czech interested? It seems not.