Can I execute external programs from PythonCe?

Hi pythonce experts,
[Igor Kaplan] 
  Would like to ask for the suggestion, is there any way to execute the
external process from pythonce code? There is the os.exec* functions,
however as I understand, they will terminate the current python process and
run the external application. I would need to start the external program and
still be able to continue with my python code.
  If it is more complicated then just calling one function, for example if I
need to create new thread and so on,  I would so much appreciate the little
code example.

  Many, many thanks in advance.

   Igor.