By Jan Lopatka
PRAGUE (Reuters) - The main Czech opposition party will file a no-confidence motion in the government next week following a row over accusations of corruption which threatens to force its market-favoured finance minister to resign.
The government has a majority in parliament and will likely survive but there is growing pressure on Minister Miroslav Kalousek to quit given evidence that he tried to influence police investigators of an army procurement deal.
Police president Petr Lessy said at a parliamentary committee meeting on Friday that Kalousek made improper comments in a phone call to him last week in connection with an investigation of the purchase of transport planes in 2009.
"The phone call culminated by hints that we will all be under charges soon," Lessy told the security committee.
Kalousek, a political veteran, is a leader of a junior coalition party and his ousting from the cabinet would shake the entire centre-right government. He denies putting any pressure on police officials.
The committee, dominated by the opposition, approved a non-binding resolution calling on Prime Minister Petr Necas to dismiss Kalousek.
Opposition centre-left Social Democrats leader Bohuslav Sobotka said the party would also trigger a vote of no-confidence in the entire cabinet next week which would test its majority in the lower house. In the last confidence vote in April, the government won 105 votes in the 200-seat chamber.
The affair is a blow to the EU country's political elite, struck by a series of graft scandals that have dominated political life in the past months.
A high-ranking opposition official was arrested carrying 7 million crowns in cash in May, which police say was a bribe, and a court sentenced a senior public servant to 7.5 years in jail this week for bribery in the distribution of EU subsidies.
Kalousek, 51, has won praise from investors for austerity measures that have pushed Czech bond yields deep below those paid by other central European countries, but he has also been criticised for strangling growth with tax hikes.
The 3.5 billion crown ($167.61 million) purchase of the four Spanish-made CASA transport planes has long been criticised by the opposition and the media as untransparent and possibly overpriced. The deal was brokered by a firm then owned by a person Kalousek has termed a personal friend.
Police have charged former Defence Minister Vlasta Parkanova with abuse of office for failing to obtain an independent appraisal for the deal, and parliament has lifted her parliamentary immunity to allow prosecution.
She denies any wrongdoing, and has been strongly defended by Kalousek, a colleague in the conservative TOP09 party.
The state attorney overseeing the case has also been quoted as saying that the investigator in the case believes Kalousek put pressure on him, a charge Kalousek denies, although he admits he spoke to the investigator by phone.
"This is a targetted and merciless smear campaign aided by these (police) provocations... I cannot consider it anything else but police provocation," Kalousek told the committee.
Prime Minister Necas has said the accusations were serious and called for their investigation.
($1 = 20.8818 Czech crowns)
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka; editing by Patrick Graham)