Czech President headed for Harvard after high-stakes UN visit

Czech President Petr Pavel will travel to the United States on Sunday to lead the country’s delegation at the United Nations General Assembly, where recognition of Palestine is expected to dominate debate.

France, Canada, Australia, and Britain have signaled they may back Palestinian statehood at this year’s session. Pavel said Czechia will not follow suit, calling such moves “symbolic” without practical effect.

“Rather, we should continue to allow the State of Palestine to formally emerge and actually function,” Pavel told ČTK last month.

“Because to declare it, to recognize it with the understanding that it will not actually work in practice, in my view, is kind of creating expectations and hopes on the part of the Palestinians that will then not be fulfilled.” He added, however, that symbolic support “also makes sense.”

In New York, Pavel will also unveil the Czech Republic’s first cultural donation to the UN: Herbarium, a glass installation by Czech design company Lasvit. The work, which resembles drops of water preserving fragments of plants, represents biodiversity and the country’s glassmaking tradition.

“The Herbarium installation was selected with regard to the requirements of the UN Committee on Arts, which approves donations, such as representativeness, artistic value, and relationship to the goals of the UN,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Daniel Drake told Publico.

With the gift, Czechia joins the majority of UN members who have contributed artworks, a tradition dating back to 1950 and including such iconic pieces as a tapestry reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica and sculptures of Nelson Mandela, St. Cyril, and Methodius.

Pavel will deliver his national address to the General Assembly on Sept. 24 and later that day give the Václav Havel Lecture on Human Rights, Civil Society and Democracy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.