Wednesday, October 9, 1968
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
11
Leaders may resign
Harsher conditions set for Czechs
PRAGUE (UPI)—The ruling Presidium of the Czechoslovak Communist party met yesterday to consider new and harsh Kremlin conditions that could lead to the resignations of First Party Secretary Alexander Dubcek and three other top reform leaders.
It was the first meeting of the 21-member committee since the three-man delegation headed by Dubek returned from Moscow late Friday with Soviet demands for stiff censorship, purges and long-range posting of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia.
The session began before noon. Dubcek entered party headquarters in Prague, smiling broadly and chatting amiably with well-wishers at the door.
Other leaders who arrived after him, however, looked glum. President Ludvik Svoboda, Premier Oldrich Cernik and National Assembly President Josef Smkrovsky entered the building without even a wave of the hand for applauding crowds outside.
Kremlin Talks
Dubcek, Cernik and Gustav Husak, Slovak party leader, represented Czechoslovakia in the Kremlin talks Thursday and Friday with Soviet Communist party leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, Premier Alexei N. Kosygin and President Nikolai Podgorny.
Swan campaign meeting tonight
Former McCarthy and Kennedy volunteers will meet at 7:15 p.m. today in Nazismh Hall cafeteria to organize student canvassing of Topeka for Congressional candidate Robert A. Swan Jr. from the Kansas Second District.
Bruce Peterson, San Diego graduate student and Pat Lewis, Mission senior, will represent the McCarthy and Kennedy organizations.
Sources close to the top party leadership said Dubcek and Cernik threatened to resign rather than accept the terms laid down by Moscow, particularly a proposed treaty which would legalize the continued stationing of Soviet occupation forces on Czechoslovak soil. Similar treaties have provided for the "temporary" presence of Red army troops in East Germany and Hungary for years.
The sources said Svoboda and
Smkrovsky were prepared to offer their resignations along with Dubcek and Cernik. Husak, who has been mentioned favorably in the Soviet press recently, also was said to have opposed the troop treaty but did not go along with the threat of resignation.
Other conditions set down by the Kremlin for what it called the return to "normalization" of lilife in Czechoslovakia included imposition of effective press controls, purges of political and intellectual ranks and a share in direct supervision of key party and government offices.
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