Ex-Czech Leader Thanks Stones

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel opened a Rolling Stones concert in Prague's Letna Park Sunday night by wishing Mick Jagger a happy birthday and recalling the mass gatherings that toppled communism.

A day earlier, Jagger celebrated his 60th birthday with a private party in Prague that the former Czech leader attended.

Before he left the party at Duplex, a club on Wenceslas Square, Havel gave Jagger a crystal base by the artist Borek Sipek.

"I congratulate Mick Jagger on his 60th birthday and I thank him for deciding to celebrate it in Prague," Havel told the fans at the concert.

Jagger is the second band member to turn 60, after drummer Charlie Watts. Guitarist Keith Richards turns 60 in December.

The concert was part of the Rolling Stones' "Forty Licks" tour. It was the band's fourth concert in Prague over the last thirteen years.

Shortly after Havel helped lead the anti-communist Velvet Revolution in 1989, Jagger took his "Steel Wheels" tour to Prague for the first time.

"That was unthinkable before it happened then," Havel told the fans. The Stones were "messengers of freedom" to Czechs who had just thrown off communist rule, he said.