Czechoslovaks to Demolish Fence on Austrian Border

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia — The government announced Thursday that it has ordered the immediate dismantling of security fences along Czechoslovakia’s frontier with Austria, doing away with yet another stretch of the Iron Curtain.

At the same time, negotiations intensified to form the first genuine coalition government in Czechoslovakia in 40 years, as the discredited Communist Party undertook to restore its credibility.

Government spokesman Marcel Jansen said that Interior Ministry work crews had begun dismantling the heavy fencing along segments of the Austrian border, concentrating first on tourist areas. Border posts, watchtowers, fences and electronic surveillance devices will all be dismantled, Jansen said at a news conference.

The move, intended to ease restrictions on Czechoslovak citizens and improve relations with Western Europe, will further diminish the Iron Curtain, a barrier that has suddenly become a relic of another time.

In the moves toward a coalition government, those involved in the talks were working against a Sunday deadline set by the opposition group Civic Forum.

The new government, which is likely to have several non-Communist members, would be transitional. It would rule only until free elections can be held, most likely in the year ahead.

Such a government was made possible Wednesday when the National Assembly voted unanimously to end the Communist Party’s dominant role in the nation’s political life.

As the effort to form a new Cabinet went forward, a source close to Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec said its exact composition and balance would be “a reflection of how far he dares to go.”

He said that Adamec sees his job as building a “government of national reconciliation” capable of steering the nation through its present crisis to free elections.

Adamec, who broke with the Communist Party hierarchy early last week by making the first open contact with Civic Forum, was described as having a relatively free hand in approaching non-Communists for his Cabinet. It was not clear how much control he would have in selecting Communist members.

Civic Forum spokesman Jiri Dienstbier said opposition representatives met with three senior Communist officials, including Politburo member Vasil Mohorita, and with members of the small People’s Party and Socialist Party.

Dienstbier reaffirmed Civic Forum’s initial stand that it does not want to be represented in the new Cabinet. Instead, he said, the group has established itself as a veto agency, reserving the right to block the nomination of individuals it considers unworthy.

“We’ve said clearly that we’ll monitor how the Cabinet is constituted for people who have no political, moral or any other competence, rejecting those directly responsible for the last 20 years,” he said.

Civic Forum appeared to be consolidating its opposition role. It was given 1 1/2 hours of prime time on Prague Radio on Thursday and is expected to move this weekend from its headquarters in the Magic Lantern Theater to offices made available by the government.

Representatives of the opposition group met with a U.S. senatorial delegation that arrived in Prague on Thursday and with senior Czechoslovak military officials about alleged harassment of army officers and their families since the collapse of the hard-line Communist regime.

Afterward, the group issued a statement calling on the public to refrain from such behavior, Dienstbier said.

The Communist Party was attempting to adjust to its new role after Wednesday’s vote abolishing its monopoly on political power. At Prague Technical University, reformist party members, who have formed a so-called Democratic Forum within the party, met for the first time in large numbers.

In a crowded lecture theater, they talked of abolishing the party militia and party units within the military. They appealed for volunteer help to get their movement going.

They handed out a statement declaring that there is only one condition for membership in their group: rejection of any kind of power monopoly.

Some analysts regard the Democratic Forum as an attempt by reformists to capture the party and turn it into a West European-style social democratic party.

At a news conference on the other side of Prague, the newly appointed spokesman for the party Central Committee, Josef Hora, told reporters that the Communists now are just one of several political parties.

There was considerable back-pedaling by some party members. Josef Matekja, editor of the intellectual weekly Tvorba, told reporters attending the Central Committee news conference: “The era of dogma has gone. All that was presented as Marxism over the last six decades was in fact Stalinism in its very essence, which of course is no philosophy at all.”

Economist Valtr Komarek, a Communist who has been critical of government policy, also condemned the ideology.

“I’ve been clear for several years that communism is nonsense,” he said. “The only thing that can be a serious subject for discussion is socialism.”

Komarek, who has been mentioned by some as a possible candidate for prime minister, rejected that idea, saying he would prefer to be an adviser.

Times staff writer Dan Fisher contributed to this story.