“I knew that it is the fight with windmills but one should not retreat even from them. I did everything allowed by the law but the arrogance of the military power was just stronger. It is possible to place the radar elsewhere, someone just should not to be lazy to think about it,” said Jan Hradil, mayor of Ujezd u Brna.

He ads that the town brought a suit against the territorial act issued by the Slavkov u Brna Building Office and now it is going to try to block the construction by applying for a precaution at the court. “We are not going to let it be,” says also the Hosteradky-Resov mayor Vaclav Martinek. He has pointed out that their lawyer had taken actions against the radar, too.

“The Peace Monument is the anti-war memento and it is a matter of paradox that a military facility – a possible target of terrorist attacks – is going to stand near to it,” said Frantisek Kopecky, mayor of Tvarozna.

The start of the core 3D NATO radar has been obstructed mainly by local communities for some 4 years. On and on they kept protesting by issues of territorial acts. However, the Government Office overruled the appeal already in June and in July the act had enured. “The tower construction should start in October and it is expected to be finished in 2007. The mounting of NATO radar technologies should follow. We expect the facility to be put into operation in 2008,” said Jan Pejsek from the Press and Information Service of the Ministry of Defense.

The radar tower construction is worth CZK 80 million and technologies CZK 500 million though these would be paid by NATO.

The distance of the radar from the Peace Monument will be 850 m in a beeline and according to Pejsek it is not going to be visible from there due to a forest in between. It should be 25 m high and replace the technically out-of-date Soviet-produced transmitters installed in the half of the last century. However, according to the local people the new radar will interrupt the piety character of the place. People are worried about the environment setback, too.

Pejsek said before that the Ministry of Defense let to process the studies on the construction’s effects on environment which confirmed that the radar does not represent any threat both to environment and human health. However, neither communities, Slavkov u Brna Building Office, Government Office nor the Ministry of Environment know nothing about its existence. “The Ministry has no information regarding the intended NATO radar construction,” said Eva Veverkova from the Ministry of Environment’s Press Department. The territorial acts were issued by the Slavkov u Brna Building Office. According to its director Josef Hlouzek communities have indeed demanded the examination of the construction’s effects on environment, so-called EIA but objections could not be accepted. “In the attachment of the Act 100 there is a list of constructions for which the EIA is required but there are no radars listed. In addition we had the statement of the Regional Hygienic Station with a positive standpoint with future measurements to be made after the completing of the construction,” said Hlouzek.

“It is not the matter of the Government Office,” said the director of the Office’s Environment Department Anna Hubackova. “I think though that in such a case the EIA should have been processed.”