TRADE AGREEMENT

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31784, 14 September 1968, Page 13

TRADE AGREEMENT

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, Sept 13. The Soviet Union has promised to increase its trade with Czechoslovakia five-fold to the equivalent of nearly SNZIOm in return for Czechoslovakia’s ending its financial flirtations with the West. The Czechoslovak Prime Minister (Mr Oldrich Cernik) signed his nation back into the Soviet’s East European economic bloc at a meeting with Kremlin officials. The Soviet news agency, Tass, says the agreement showed the readiness of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia “to develop equitable and mutually advantageous economic co-opera-tion.”

Before the Soviet invasion, Czechoslovakia had hinted strongly that she would turn to the West, particularly West Germany,

for financial aid and trade agreements to bolster the Czechoslovak economy.

The agreement Mr Cernik has signed precludes that course. The Czechoslovak Communist Party leader (Mr Alexander Dubcek) has declared that Czechoslovakia will carry out to the letter, honourably and correctly, the terms of the Moscow agreement which followed the occupation of his country.

Prague television reported the party leader’s declaration, which was made at a meeting of rank-and-file Communists at the C.K.D. engineering works in Prague. But Mr Dubcek insisted that the party would not give way and return to the authoritarian line of his predecessor, Mr Antonin Novotny, or the Stalinist policies of the 19505.