Troop Movements On Czech Border

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31676, 11 May 1968, Page 13

Troop Movements On Czech Border

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

WARSAW, May 10.

Western diplomats, and some other residents of Warsaw, were temporarily barred yesterday from leaving the city—amid a flurry of reports of Soviet troop movements along the PolishCzechoslovakian border, United Press International reported.

Eyewitnesses, who wished to remain unidentified, insisted that they saw Soviet troops about 37 miles south of Crakow. the former polish capital near the Czech border, moving from east to west toward the Czech frontier.

A Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman said last night, however, that the reports of Soviet troop movements were “mere rumours,” and denied any knowledge that Western diplomats had been barred from leaving Warsaw. By last night, all roads out of Warsaw were free of police patrols. Harold Martin, United Press International correspondent in Warsaw, was able to drive freely outside the capital. The restrictions on the diplomats' movements coincided with Warsaw newspaper editorials deploring the appearance of “anti-Socialist trends” in Czechoslovakia’s political reform.

The editorials hinted that it was time the Prague authorities brought such trends under control. The Polish communist Party leader, Mr Gomulka, paid a hurried visit last night to Moscow for talks with Soviet, East German, Hungarian, and Bulgarian leaders —believed here to have been about Czechoslovak developments. Non-Committal After their dramatic dash to Moscow yesterday, the four East European leaders early today issued a noncommittal statement that they had exchanged opinions on world and Communist problems.

But Moscow observers were unanimous in the belief that Czechoslovak developments under Alexander Dubcek had been the main topic of discussion.

The Polish and East German press have been showing increasing concern at the wave of liberalism which has swept Czechoslovakia. United Press International reported that Prague Radio declared again today, on Czechoslovakia’s national day, that there must be no repetition of Soviet intervention as there was in Hungary in its 1956 rebellion, or of Soviet pressure on Jugoslavia. “For God’s sake, let us not have even an implication of a repetition of the tragic history of the reckoning of Jugoslavia, perhaps even that of Budapest in 1956,” a Prague Radio commentator said.

Any differences among the Communist bloc nations should be settled by “clear

and unambiguous words” rather than by dramatic action, he said.

Czechoslovak diplomatic sources in London, commenting on suggestions that the reported troop movements in Poland were connected with Warsaw Pact manoeuvres planned in Czechoslovakia, said they knew of no such manoeuvres. They would be very surprised, they said if such manoeuvres should be held, in view of the current situation in Czechoslovakia. Two divisions Of Soviet troops are believed stationed in Poland, located mainly in Silesia to guard lines of communication with East Germany.

A greetings message today from Polish party and Government leaders reminded their Czechoslovak counterparts that both countries had founded the future and security of their peoples “on the unbreakable alliance with the Soviet Union."