Czech Government to Include Opposition

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia--Premier Ladislav Adamec promised yesterday to include non-Communists in a new government and try to end the constitutional guarantee of the party's monopoly on power.

Adamec made the pledges in a meeting with the opposition Civic Forum movement after 11 straight days of unprecedented protest in Czechoslovakia. Millions of workers observed a two-hour general strike Monday, but the streets were quiet yesterday because the Civic Forum asked for calm.

After the meeting, government minister Marian Calfa said Adamec would submit a coalition government to President Gustav Husak by Sunday.

Civic Forum spokesman Jiri Kanturek appeared on state TV's evening news with a 10-point statement outlining concessions made and further opposition demands.

Two demands were for free elections and the resignation by Dec. 10 of Husak, a central figure in the crackdown on reform after the Soviet-led invasion of August 1968.

At a news conference, prominent dissident Jiri Dienstbier read a letter saying Husak's resignation "would calm the situation down."

The Civic Forum, and the allied Public Against Violence in Slovakia, also demanded immediate revision of the official view that the "Prague Spring" reforms of 1968 were worthless.

It called on Czechoslovakia to urge the Soviet, East German and Bulgarian parliaments to follow those of Poland and Hungary in condemning the 1968 invasion by the five Warsaw Pact countries as "a violation of international norms and the Warsaw Treaty itself," Kanturek said on television.

His two-minute appearance was the first time Civic Forum was allowed to make its points on a national TV news program.

Kanturek said Adamec pledged to seek access to state-run media for the opposition, and permission to publish its own journals. The premier also said he would try to obtain the release by Dec. 10--International Human Rights Day--of political prisoners named by Civic Forum, he said.

Dienstbier told the news conference a list of 30 political prisoners had been submitted, with the right reserved to add more names.

On television, Kanturek said the government should urge Parliament to adopt new laws guaranteeing free elections and freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, religion and speech, and to abolish the People's Militia, the Communist Party paramilitary force.

"If the public is not satisfied with the new program, the Civic Forum and Public Against Violence will ask for the premier's resignation," Kanturek said.

He concluded with an appeal to Czechoslovaks to work peacefully while remaining on alert to strike if necessary. He said students and actors still on strike probably would end their sit-ins in a day or so, but that Civic Forum would support them if they continued.

Students began the pro-democracy movement after a demonstration Nov. 17 that was put down brutally by police, and 80,000 have been on strike for a week.

Calfa, a minister without portfolio, told a news conference the coalition would be "a government constituted primarily of experts and professionals" including Communists, members of other parties traditionally allied to the ruling Communists, and outside figures.

He said Adamec promised to ask Parliament to remove constitutional guarantees of Communist Party supremacy, but did not mention free elections.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said: "We applaud Civic Forum for its commitment to peaceful transformation to democracy."