Czech Premier Vows a Coalition Government : East Bloc: Adamec will seek to downgrade official role of communism. The opposition keeps up pressure for free elections.

Faced with an opposition ultimatum, Czechoslovakia’s Communist prime minister promised Tuesday to form a new coalition government, including an unspecified number of non-Communists, by next Sunday.

Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec also said he will submit to an emergency session of the Parliament today a draft amendment that would eliminate from the Czechoslovak constitution both its guarantee of the “leading role” of the Communist Party and its commitment to Marxism-Leninism as the official state ideology.

But the umbrella opposition group Civic Forum kept up its pressure, threatening to move by year’s end for dissolution of the new Cabinet as well, if it fails to come up with an acceptable timetable for holding free elections and introducing legal guarantees for a host of other human rights.

Civic Forum, which in only 10 days has mobilized virtually this entire nation against its discredited Communist political leadership, also demanded:

That President Gustav Husak, the former party chief installed by Moscow after the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion that ended an earlier drive for reform here in 1968, resign his remaining, largely ceremonial post by Dec. 10.

That the authorities publicly condemn the 1968 invasion and appeal to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact to also declare the intervention a violation of international law.

And that the government disband so-called workers’ militias--Communist loyalists who are issued firearms and serve as an extra military arm of the party.

The latest developments added to the sense of amazement here over the lightning speed with which the hard-line Communist system appears to be collapsing in Czechoslovakia.

“It took years in Poland, months in Hungary, weeks in East Germany, and here it’s taken days,” said a Western diplomat of the extraordinary transformations that have swept through Eastern Europe, posing new terms of reference on a continent divided for more than 40 years by the Cold War.

However, Civic Forum strategist Jan Urban warned in an interview that despite the breathtaking changes, the battle is not yet won.

“I see the next few days as the most risky period,” Urban said, adding that the opposition has “received many warning signals that the situation in the army is very complicated and risky.”

Urban said Civic Forum has information that much of Czechoslovakia’s army has been confined to barracks for the last 11 days, with no access to mail, television or newspapers, while political officers “talk to them about the possibility of civil war.”

The danger of a military coup has increased, the activist added, because “the leadership of this (Communist) Party doesn’t control the situation; this government doesn’t control the situation; Civic Forum doesn’t control the situation. So the only organizational strength in the state is the army and the security, and this is very, very risky, because they are tied so closely to the old regime.”

Urban said this weekend’s summit meeting between Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and President Bush is probably the greatest guarantee against violence. The Czechoslovak army is closely integrated within the Warsaw Pact structure and presumably could not be used against the democratic revolution here without the knowledge of Gorbachev, who appears intent on improving East-West relations.

Assurances Sought

However, the opposition takes its information seriously enough that it has asked both the Socialist Youth Union, which has chapters in the armed forces, and the prime minister’s office to clarify the situation. Unless it is assured by today that conditions in the military have been returned to normal, “our best defense would probably be to launch a mass campaign to warn the public of this (coup) possibility,” Urban said.

Ironically, Tuesday’s dramatic developments occurred on what was otherwise probably the quietest day in Prague in nearly two weeks after Civic Forum declared an end to the demonstrations that had drawn as many as 500,000 Czechoslovaks into the streets daily. The opposition group said it wants to cool down the situation during negotiations with the government, knowing that it can quickly mobilize the population again if the authorities balk at change.

“We want to celebrate, but everybody is so tired we’re close to collapse,” said Eva Lnenickova, 22, one of the university students who ignited the political firestorm engulfing the country. “We hope this week there will be a chance to celebrate, because this is a great victory,” she added after hearing about Adamec’s capitulation at a two-hour meeting with Civic Forum leaders earlier Tuesday.

But student leaders said they will continue their strike until Adamec meets the Sunday deadline to deliver on his promises.

“It was beautiful,” said Petr Gajdos, 27, a scientific researcher, of the government’s latest concessions. “But it is not yet confirmed, and it is not yet complete.” Gajdos and half a dozen other young men were camped out at the base of a statue of religious reformer Jan Hus in what their name badges proclaimed to be the “Liberated Old Town Square.”

Confirming Adamec’s commitment to propose a new government, Marian Calfa, a minister without portfolio who participated in Tuesday’s negotiations, described the atmosphere as “rather excited” because of the conflicting views exchanged. But later, he said, the mood became more “constructive . . . in a mutual endeavor to find possible ways out of the present political situation.”

Calfa said the new Cabinet is to include “both non-party representatives and representatives of other political parties, and at the same time, of course, representatives of the Communist Party. It will be a government constituted primarily of experts,” he added.

Calfa refused to answer questions after reading a brief statement to journalists, but Tuesday night, Civic Forum leader Vaclav Havel said that his organization “is not and cannot be a political party,” and that while it is ready to consult with the prime minister on the new government’s makeup, “in no case will these demands have the form that representatives of Civic Forum are directly represented in the Cabinet.”

Separately, it was learned that Adamec has already offered five Cabinet seats to two small political parties--the Czechoslovak Socialist Party and the Czechoslovak People’s Party, a Catholic group--that have in recent days dramatically transformed themselves from tame puppets of the Communists to truly independent voices.

The current federal government has 23 members of ministerial rank, all of them members of the Communist Party.

Adamec refused to rejoin the party’s ruling Presidium during two stormy emergency meetings that saw wholesale leadership changes last weekend, saying he was disappointed in its commitment to reform.

However, Communist Party spokesman Josef Hora told reporters Tuesday that “I am convinced” Adamec consulted the new party leadership before agreeing to Civic Forum’s demand for a coalition with non-Communists.

Tuesday’s negotiations were adjourned twice in just two hours, reportedly while Adamec conferred with party chief Karel Urbanek.

To Meet Gorbachev

Spokesman Hora revealed that Urbanek has been invited to visit Gorbachev in Moscow early next month, following the Soviet leader’s return from his summit meeting in Malta.

Havel and other opposition leaders outlined the additional demands they had made of Adamec at a packed press conference Tuesday night.

Most important, they said, the delegation had “requested of the prime minister that the changed Cabinet, as speedily as possible, issue the outlines of its program declaration which would make it plain that the government is prepared to create the legal prerequisites for the holding of free elections, assuring freedom of assembly and association, freedom of speech and the press, the abolition of government supervision of the churches and change in the defense law, as well as others.”

It said the new government should “as quickly as possible transform its program declaration into visible deeds. The (Civic Forum) delegation made it plain to the prime minister that if the public is not satisfied with the program declaration of the government and its transformation into specific measures, the Civic Forum and Public Against Violence (an allied Slovakian group) will, at the end of this year, ask the prime minister and his Cabinet to resign, and the president of the republic to name a new prime minister, which, if the president considers it suitable, will be drafted by the Civic Forum and Public Against Violence.”

Opposition leaders said Adamec informed them that he has already requested that President Husak pardon as many as 30 political prisoners who remain in Czechoslovak prisons.

They also said that a commission, including representatives of Civic Forum and students, is to be set up at today’s emergency Parliament meeting to investigate the brutal police repression of a student demonstration here Nov. 17. Creation of such a commission was a key demand of student strikers.