Prague Enjoys First Peace In Nine Days

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31772, 31 August 1968, Page 13

Prague Enjoys First Peace In Nine Days

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

PRAGUE, August 30.

Soviet-occupied Prague has spent its first night free from curfew since Warsaw Pact forces marched into Czechoslovakia nine days ago, and was disturbed only by two single shots and a Soviet tank which roared at top speed through the centre of the city at 2 a.m.

Russian troops in light trucks quietly patrolled the empty streets, and one troop carrier with about 20 armed soldiers aboard drove up to the St Wenceslas Monument and tried to disperse the dozen students who had maintained a day-and-night vigil of protest there since the Russians came.

Tut they stood firm and the invaders drove off.

The students have turned the monument into a memorial for four young people killed during the invasion. Rows of candles on the steps burn in memory of the dead, one of them a 14-year-old boy. The tank was the first seen in the centre of the city for

about three days. It roared through the deserted Wenceslas Square and disappeared at high speed.

Radios Silent

Czechoslovakia’s clandestine radio stations, which had continued to bring news to the people at the height of the crisis, went off the air one by one yesterday, signing off with only the barest of announcements.

But two stations calling themselves “The Legal Czechoslovak Radio” came back on the air this morning with news bulletins and snatches of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, and were later joined by a third station. At one time last week, 16 stations were on the air, urging Czechoslovaks not to provoke the invaders but also not to help them. They operated from flats, garden sheds and factory cellars, escaping detection by Soviet technicians by changing wavelengths and locations two or three times a day. Those who operated them have now accepted the fact that the Government control of news media was one of the conditions attached to the withdrawal of troops, and have closed down the stations. The Prague authorities are reported to have asked Czechoslovak armoured units to assume control of the radio equipment for fear that it might be seized >by the Russians and used to support accusations of the existence of counter - revolutionary forces in the country. Dubcek Tired Reports swept through Prague during the night that the Czechoslovak Communist Party leader (Mr Alexander Dubcek) had been taken to hospital suffering from nervous collapse, but sources who had been with him last night say that, although desperately tired, he is carrying on. The 46-year-old reformist leader spent yesterday in Prague Castle, holding urgent consultations in an effort to

find a party leadership acceptable to both the Czechoslovaks and Moscow.

The consultations are due to resume today. Mr Dubcek is trying to find a way out of the tangle left by a secret extraordinary party congress which elected a new Central Committee while he and other Czechoslovak leaders were in Moscow seeking agreement for the withdrawal of the troops. The Czechoslovak leader is reported to be considering resolving his difficulties by convening a new extraordinary fourteenth congress which would reverse last week’s decision and enable him to amalgamate the old and new Central Committees and bring pro-Kremlin men back into the leadership. U.S. Retaliation From Bonn it is reported that United States military authorities in West Germany have restricted the movements of the Soviet military mission in Frankfurt in retaliation for similar restrictions on the .Western Allies. The Soviet Command in East Germany has imposed restrictions on the United States, British and French missions in Potsdam, near Berlin, since last week’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. Britain, however, has not restricted the Soviet mission attached to the British Army at Buende, neither have the French announced any decision regarding the Soviet mission in Baden-Baden. Normally, the military missions can travel freely in each other’s territory under fourpower agreements made after the Second World War.