Many Israelis discovered yesterday for the first time that they have a friend in Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman. Arriving yesterday for a two-day visit, Zeman said that Israel cannot \"negotiate with people who kill civilians for political purposes,\" and that the only way to deal with terrorists is to fight them. Asked specifically about Arafat, Zeman responded, \"Any political leader who tolerates political terrorism as a legitimate tool for his political campaign is a terrorist. You know the English expression: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, tastes like a duck - then it is a duck.\" Zeman compared Israel\'s situation with the Czech experience with Hitler, and bemoaned the fact that there was \"no courage by democratic countries [to defeat him] because of the appeasement policy.\" Zeman\'s lesson from history is that, \"You cannot negotiate with terrorists, because the single response of terrorists for fulfilling their demands is blackmail - new demands, nothing more.\"



Zeman met with both Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and President Moshe Katzav yesterday. Katzav later said that if all European leaders shared Zeman\'s attitude towards the worldwide terrorism threat, \"there would be a dramatic decrease in terrorism.\"