Prague Considers Reply To Moscow

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31737, 22 July 1968, Page 11

Prague Considers Reply To Moscow

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

PRAGUE, July 21.

Czechoslovakia’s Communist leaders are today reported still to be considering the technical details of a meeting with Soviet leaders, though accepting in principle Moscow’s invitation to talks on political and ideological differences. Informed sources say that the Presidium has so far sent no official reply to the Kremlin invitation, received on Friday, and that the main stumbling blocks to full acceptance of the Soviet proposal are the choice of a site, a date for the talks, and the composition of the delegations. Communist sources suggest that it may take the Presidium a day or two more to resolve these problems—by which time the last of the Soviet troops engaged in last month’s Warsaw Pact exercises should have left Czechoslovak territory.

The Soviet invitation suggested talks in Moscow, or in the Ukrainian cities of Kiev or Ivov. Earlier, the First Party Secretary in Prague (Mr Alexander Dubcek) and his colleagues had said they would agree to talks only on Czechoslovak soil, and there are still strong reservations among the party leaders about meeting on the Soviet side of the frontier. There is also growing hostility to the idea among the general public, who would tend to view a meeting in Russia as some kind of capitulation to Moscow that would be ill-suited to the present tense relations between the two parties. Informed sources say the Presidium welcomed what was, in fact, Soviet acceptance of Czechoslovakia’s original proposals for bilaterial talks.

The Prague regime, bitterly condemned by last week’s Warsaw meeting of Soviet. East German, Hungarian, Polish and Bulgarian leaders, proposed bilateral talks because they did not want to come under a crushing burden of united opposition to their reformist policies. Mr Dubcek and his col-

leagues wanted to discuss the situation on their ground, but it is pointed out in diplomatic circles that Moscow has made a concession in agreeing to bilateral talks and it is now up to Prague to meet the Russians halfway. Specula Von about a site for the meeting has included the possibility of a conference in a third country, such as Hungary. In Moscow, the Soviet Communist Party newspaper, “Pravda” said today imperialist propaganda was trying to distort accounts of last week’s Warsaw meeting. The newspaper, quoted by the Tass news agency, said the Warsaw meeting was “a fresh demonstration of the internationalism and solidarity of the Communist parties

and peoples of Socialist countries.” “Raising all the hullaballoo they can about ‘threats’ and ‘an ultimatum’ allegedly contained in the letter to the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, the imperialists are talking with increasing cynicism about the possibilities of Czechoslovakia’s breaking away from the Socialist community, openly banking on the forces of internal reaction in that country,” said an editorial in “Pravda.” “The forces attacking socialism in Czechoslovakia are openly co-operating with the imperialists and, in particular, with the revanchists in Western Germany, where the forces of neo-Nazism are on the increase.”