Manacled Dubcek Was Flown To Slovakia

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31771, 30 August 1968, Page 11

Manacled Dubcek Was Flown To Slovakia

(N.2 P A.-Reuter—Copyright)

PRAGUE, August 29.

Mr Alexander Dubcek, the Czechoslovak Communist Party leader, was bundled out of his party headquarters last Wednesday, manacled, and flown to a secret destination in Slovakia in a Soviet military aircraft.

All the way he sat on the plane’s metal deck. This was disclosed in the first authentic account of Mr Dubcek’s arrest and of the Moscow negotiations given to a Reuters correspondent yesterday by an official of the party Central Committee.

The official said Mr Dubcek was in his private room speaking on the telephone when the Central Committee building was surrounded by Soviet paratroops with light tracked vehicles last Wednesday morning. The party leader was trying to find out details of the extent of the invasion.

| A Soviet security officer land two soldiers armed with light machine-guns burst into the room. They tore the telephone out of Mr Dubcek’s hands and ripped the wire out of the wall. With his closest fellow workers, Mr Dubcek was taken away and locked in a room in the building. Cold food was served. The official. Who was inside the Central Committee building at the time, said Mr Josef Smrkovsky, president of the National Assembly, and the Prime Minister, Mr Oldrich Cernik, where also present.

Mr Smrkovsky picked up a few lumps of sugar from a tea tray, slipped them into his pocket and murmured: “I am going to need this.” The official said Mr Dubcek, Mr Cernik, Mr Smrkovsky and a small group of leaders were flown to a secret military rendezvous in Slovakia and held for 24 hours.

Meanwhile, President Svoboda, who had flown to Moscow, was faced with an ultimatum from the Russians. If he did not agree to change the Government and the party Slovakia would be converted into a Soviet Republic and the Czechlands of Bohemia and Moravia would be converted into autonomous regions under Soviet control. President Svoboda never lost his iron nerve, the official said.

He replied with an ultimatum of his own: unless Mr Dubcek and the other leaders were released he would discuss nothing. That night, Mr Dubcek and some of the other leaders were taken from their Slovak detention and flown to Moscow.

The official said Communist Party officials had been told that 650,000 Soviet and other

occupation troops were now in Czechoslovakia. About 800 security agents and key personnel for radio, press and essential services such as power, lighting and public transport had been flown in during the last week.

According to a report from a Communist source, who flew to Moscow last week from Prague, President Svoboda was kept for nearly five days in isolation in Moscow except for frequent “threatening” meetings with the Soviet leadership. This report said Mr Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist Party chief, the Prime Minister, Mr Alexei Kosygin, and Mr Mikhail Suslov, the party's leading theoretician, had strong reservations about the occupation of Czechoslovakia at the decisive meeting of the Soviet Party Presidium.