Last week joomla 1.7.0 was released. I would rather wait for 1.7.1, but my 1.6 templates were upgraded, so they can be used in joomla 1.6 and 1.7 as well. If you modified the 1.6 template at too many places, and thus you don't want to upgrade it, then I suggest to modify only the index.php. Remove the following lines:
And insert the following line
into these lines:
