Czechoslovakia Takes the Lead in Forging a New European Order : East Bloc: Prague’s government moves eagerly forward in establishing new ties to the West.

About the same time that Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier told his Warsaw Pact peers that their alliance belonged on history’s trash heap and that a new European order should stretch from San Francisco to Vladivostok, he also responded to critics who had accused his government of naivete and messianism.

“If we allow that nothing is impossible, we shall achieve concrete results sooner than we ourselves expect,” Dienstbier, a former journalist who used to be jailed often for his dissident views, said last weekend.

It was his way of explaining the foreign policy by which he and a fellow former dissident, President Vaclav Havel, have propelled this small country from Communist anonymity into the world spotlight in a few breathless weeks.

In so doing, they have restored a tangible sense of pride and political excitement to what was, even in its saddest days, one of Europe’s most beautiful capitals. But they have also stepped on a few toes, both here and in Washington.

Last Tuesday marked only 100 days since Czechoslovakia became the next-to-last nation of Eastern Europe to overthrow the old order. But Havel already has sealed a highly symbolic reconciliation with West German President Richard von Weizsaecker, addressed the U.S. Congress and swapped compliments with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Moscow.

In the past week, he has been in Paris meeting with French President Francois Mitterrand and in London talking with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and lunching with Queen Elizabeth II. Next month, the Pope is due in Prague.

Czechoslovakia was the first of the former East Bloc satellites to negotiate the withdrawal of Soviet troops from its territory and to cut its international espionage ties with the KGB. At last weekend’s Warsaw Pact meeting here, Dienstbier unveiled a new proposal for a three-stage transition to a confederated Europe, free of both the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Prague has applied for guest status in the Council of Europe, observer status in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and readmittance into the International Monetary Fund. It has sought dialogue with the European Free Trade Assn.

Havel also has taken the lead in urging new forms of cooperation among countries on the fringe of the European Community, especially including Czechoslovakia’s partners in transition, Poland and Hungary.

Asked during a brief interview what is behind his country’s diplomatic whirlwind, Dienstbier responded: “I think we just lost 40 years, and now we are in a hurry.”

They are in a hurry to go home, he added, to “return to Europe” after war and Soviet domination effectively separated them from the continental mainstream for a half century.

The “essential ties of history and thought” that bind Czechoslovakia to the European tradition go back centuries, as does the continental activism of its leaders, he said.

But there’s more to Czechoslovakia’s diplomatic offensive than simple tradition.

“Eastern Europe today is in fact a geopolitical vacuum,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, former President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser.

“This situation may persist for a while because Germany is still divided and the Soviet Union is temporarily weak,” he added in an address to the Institute of International Relations here earlier this month. “But in the longer run, the vacuum is bound to be filled by outsiders unless the countries of the region organize forms more capable of protecting and promoting their own regional interest.”

The more firmly this government can anchor Czechoslovakia among its Central European neighbors and link the region with the West, the better able it will be to withstand any fallout from the political chaos threatening the Soviet Union.

Its diplomatic initiatives are meant, among other things, to show the West that while it needs help to transform itself, Czechoslovakia is not seeking admission hat-in-hand.

“We have the chance to transform a wreath of European states which were until recently colonized by the Soviets . . . into a special body which will approach the richer Western Europe, not as a poor apostate or a helpless amnestied prisoner, but as somebody who also brings something,” Havel told the Polish Sejm, or Parliament, in January. “That is, spiritual and moral impulses, daring peace initiatives, unexploited creative potential, the ethos of freshly won freedom and inspiration for courageous and speedy solutions.”

The Havel-Dienstbier initiatives are not universally welcomed. The United States and its West European allies, for example, are unhappy with their talk about a bloc-free Europe, which would mean farewell not only to the Warsaw Pact, but also to NATO.

At home, some Czechoslovaks are offended by what they see as the government’s undue haste to cozy up to Germany, which did much damage here during a five-year occupation in World War II. And their political opponents grouse that Havel and Dienstbier are going too far, too fast.

“This government was created as a government of national understanding,” Socialist Party secretary Jaroslav Kral said. “Its main job is to bring the country to free elections. We think the government is somewhat overstepping its mandate by undertaking feverish activity in all directions.”

Mostly, Czechoslovaks appear pleased that their country is once again opening up to the world outside.

“The isolation of Czechoslovakia (under Communist rule) has always been felt as a terrible curtailment of the natural environment,” Jan Kovan, spokesman for the Civic Forum citizens’ movement, said.

The country’s new-found international standing also acts as an emotional reward for a population soon to feel the stick of painful economic reform.