Prague Negotiators Agree to Restructure Parliament

In a further retreat for Czechoslovakia’s once-dominant Communist Party, negotiators for the nation’s major political forces agreed late Wednesday on a plan to restructure the nation’s Parliament, potentially depriving dozens of Communist lawmakers of their jobs.

The deal, struck in a series of back-room meetings between leaders of the Communists, the main Civic Forum opposition group and several smaller political parties, appears to reject a Communist plan, floated Tuesday, for the nation’s president to be chosen by a national election rather than by the Federal Assembly, the Czechoslovak Parliament.

The Communists had proposed the direct nationwide vote as a way of blocking the presidential candidacy of opposition leader Vaclav Havel. Opposition groups had favored a vote in Parliament over a national election because the Communists retain a massive organizational edge over them, particularly in provincial areas outside Prague.

Opposition strategist Jan Urban said Wednesday that “basic agreement” has been reached on a deal but that further negotiations will be needed before a final package could be announced, possibly as early as today.

But, Urban said, the Communists had agreed to engineer the resignations of perhaps as many as a quarter of the members of the Parliament, which is dominated by loyal party functionaries. The newly created vacancies will be filled by delegates appointed by party leaders in consultation with the opposition. Those delegates will serve until elections are held in the spring or early summer.

The restructuring is designed to ensure that hard-line Communist lawmakers no longer can delay or block reform legislation proposed by the government. The changes would also allow the Parliament to proceed with the presidential election in the next few days.

The presidency has been open since Communist President Gustav Husak resigned Sunday after swearing in the nation’s new government--the first in four decades not controlled by the Communists.

Havel remains the favorite for the presidency. The two other men who have most actively sought the job, former Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec and Alexander Dubcek, the leader of the nation’s 1968 reform movement, were both effectively ruled out last week when all parties agreed that the presidency should go to a non-communist and a Czech. Adamec is a party member and Dubcek is a Slovak, as is the country’s new prime minister, Marian Calfa.

A fourth candidate, Cestmir Cisar, who served as a senior official in Dubcek’s government, has mounted a campaign but appears to have generated little support.

Civic Forum leaders, however, would not rule out on Wednesday the possibility that they would agree to accept a compromise candidate other than Havel as part of a package to restructure the legislature.