Soviets Start Czechoslovakia Troop Pullout, Reject Demand for End of Year Deadline

The Soviet Union announced Friday that its troops, which have occupied Czechoslovakia since the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, will start returning home this month, but rebuffed Prague’s demands for a total withdrawal by the end of this year.

Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Ivan P. Aboimov made the announcement over Czechoslovak radio in Moscow. Evzen Vacek, his Czechoslovak counterpart in negotiations on the troop withdrawal, hailed as a “very important result” a Soviet commitment to pull out the “fundamental” part of Soviet combat units “by the end of May” even without agreement on a total pullout of the 73,500-troop force.

President Vaclav Havel’s government has demanded a total pullout before Dec. 31 and a “substantial” withdrawal before elections in June, the first voting in four decades free of Communist control.

Western diplomats here said the Soviet announcement Friday was designed to “make Moscow look good and get Czechoslovakia to ease off” while the Kremlin negotiates the timetable for a gradual withdrawal.

Soviet negotiators, both during talks here last month and in Moscow this week, have argued for more time to complete the withdrawal, citing a lack of rail transport and of barracks and housing in the Soviet Union for soldiers and their families.