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Kalinak Refuses to Resign Over Scandal Involving Explosives
Thursday 07 January 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, January 7 (TASR) - Interior Minister Robert Kalinak on Thursday refused to resign over the international scandal that has ensured after the Slovak police put explosives in the luggage of a Slovak citizen boarding a plane last weekend as part of a training exercise.
Kalinak said that he hasn't been asked to resign by Prime Minister Robert Fico either. Fico claimed in his statement that the practice of training dogs to search for explosives was also in place under former governments. "It's no reason therefore to consider the resignation of the minister, who has my full confidence," he said.
Former interior minister Vladimir Palko (2002-06) from the extra-parliamentary Conservative Democrats of Slovakia (KDS) denied that such practices were in place under the former government. "The international scandal involving the explosives is no heritage of the past, as Kalinak claims," he said.
[Ninety grams of explosive were found in the luggage of a Slovak citizen who boarded a plane in Poprad (Presov region) to Ireland on Saturday. Police at the airport hid samples of explosives in the luggage of several passengers as part of an operation aimed at testing the airport's security procedures. However, 90 grams of the substance became stuck in the straps of the bag of a 49-year-old man and were taken on the plane undetected. - ed. note].
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