Ex-Czech Foreign Minister Detained

Former Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jiri Hajek, who served during the Prague Spring reforms, was detained for five hours Friday while on his way to give a lecture in Prague on the 1968 reform movement, sources said.

Sources in Vienna and Prague, who requested anonymity, said police in Prague detained Hajek at the Hotel Olympic, where a West German group was holding a seminar on Czechoslovak history. The sources said the seminar, where Hajek was to speak about the short-lived Prague Spring liberalization period, was banned by authorities but that no one else was detained.

Hajek, 76, served as foreign minister during the 1968 Prague Spring reform period that was crushed by Soviet troops.

Hajek is a member of Charter 77, the Soviet Bloc’s oldest, unofficial human rights organization. It was named for a document calling on Czechoslovakia to respect civil liberties.