Bush Warns of Mideast Peril in Prague Speech

Leaving behind a nation deeply divided over the prospect of war in the Persian Gulf, President Bush arrived here Saturday looking for a receptive audience for his message that “the freedom of people everywhere remains under threat” from the aggression of Iraq.

Czechoslovakia, Bush noted, was among the first victims of Nazi aggression in the 1930s and of Soviet aggression a decade later.

Now, Bush told a huge crowd in the city’s Wenceslas Square, “it is no coincidence” that Czechs and Slovaks “should be among the first to understand that there is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is evil. And there are sacrifices worth making.”

Bush’s speech to more than 100,000 flag-waving people in the vast square--the largest such audience of his presidency--kicked off a weeklong trip through Europe and the Middle East during which words delivered to overseas audiences will be aimed largely at home.

For the President and his advisers, the scenes of foreign applause provide a welcome opportunity to rebuild domestic support for their Persian Gulf policies.

In seeking to do so, Bush hewed strictly to his argument that the main justification for his policy is the need to stop aggression, avoiding the economic argument advanced recently by Secretary of State James A. Baker III and stressed privately by many Administration officials.

“The current crisis is a warning to America as well as to Europe that we cannot turn inward, somehow insulate ourselves from global challenges,” Bush told members of the Czechoslovak Parliament a few hours before his speech in the square. “Iraq’s brutal aggression against Kuwait is a rude reminder that none of us can remain secure when aggression remains unchecked.”

Bush’s visit here came on the anniversary of the precipitating incident of Czechoslovakia’s peaceful revolution, the police attack on student demonstrators in Prague on Nov. 17, 1989, that eventually led to the downfall of the Communist government. His speech was set on the site of some of the revolution’s largest demonstrations.

But in contrast with the open-air speeches by Czech and Slovak leaders that punctuated those demonstrations, Bush spoke from inside a glass-and-plywood booth set up in the square, largely blocking the view of the statue of St. Wenceslas on horseback that symbolizes Czech nationalism.

The enclosure, resembling a huge fish tank, was one of several unusually tight security precautions adopted to meet the threat of Iraqi-inspired terrorism. They served as symbols of how much a trip originally designed to celebrate the end of the Cold War in Europe has been overshadowed by the prospect of a hot war in the Persian Gulf.

Nonetheless, Bush’s visit, the first to the country by a U.S. president, drew an emotional response from the crowd. As he completed his speech, Bush rang a replica of the Liberty Bell, then briefly joined in the chorus as the massive crowd swayed to the tune of “We Shall Overcome,” the U.S. civil rights anthem adopted as a hymn of Czechoslovakia’s so-called Velvet Revolution.

As darkness fell over the square, parents held children up on their shoulders in the hope of giving the youngsters a glimpse of the President, First Lady Barbara Bush and Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel and his wife, Olga, standing inside their protective booth. During the singing of the national anthems and the laying of wreaths to commemorate Czechs and Slovaks killed resisting communism, tears ran down the cheeks of some onlookers.

For most of its brief existence as a nation, Czechoslovakia has been tied to the United States. Czechoslovakia’s first president, Thomas Masaryk, an admirer of Thomas Jefferson and other leaders of the American Revolution, won the country’s independence at the end of World War I largely by persuading then-President Woodrow Wilson to support his efforts during the postwar Versailles Peace Conference.

On Thursday, Prague’s main railroad station, which bore Wilson’s name until the Nazis took over the country in 1938, was rechristened with the former President’s name.

And speaking to the crowd at the square Saturday, Havel invoked the American experience to assure his people that the country can prevail over its current deep economic and political problems--including the threat of secession by the Slovak regions in the nation’s east.

After its own revolution, Havel said, “the United States overcame the initial spell of crisis and developed into a powerful citadel of democracy . . . a source of inspiration and hope for all those who suffer oppression.”

“There is no other path for us to follow but the path of the same effort,” Havel said.

For his part, Bush praised Czechoslovakia’s peaceful revolution, declaring that “the world will never forget what happened here in this square where the history of freedom was written.

“In the face of force, you deployed the power of principle. Against a wall of lies, you advanced the truth.”

In throwing off communism, Bush said, Czechoslovakia had joined “a new commonwealth of freedom” based on principles of the dignity and rights of man, the conviction that government derives its powers from the people, that people have the right to enjoy the fruits of their own labors and that the rule of law must govern nations.

As the nation moves from revolution to renaissance, Bush said, “we will not fail you in this decisive moment. America will stand with you to the end.”

Bush also announced that the Declaration of Independence of the first Czechoslovak Republic, issued by Masaryk in Washington in 1918 and stored ever since at the Library of Congress, will be returned to Czechoslovak custody.

The speech on the square was the emotional highlight of a day that began with Havel greeting Bush in a chill, windblown ceremony outside the city’s ancient Hradcany Castle.

Bush met with leaders of the Czechoslovak federal government as well as leaders of the Czech and Slovak states, trying in his meetings as well as his speeches to follow Havel’s policy of mollifying Slovak nationalism by singling out Slovak figures for praise.

The conversations, Administration officials said, concentrated on economic issues. Czechoslovakia, which will soon take the difficult plunge into a truly free-market economy, has been seeking expanded aid and trade from western nations. Bush pledged to be “supportive,” but made clear that increased aid from the U.S. government will be scarce.

“The thing that would be of most benefit to Czechoslovakia and the United States would be increased investment and increased private sector help,” he said at a brief news conference with Havel.

And then, bringing the discussion back to the subject that is clearly uppermost in his mind, Bush noted how much the confrontation in the Persian Gulf has hurt Eastern Europe by raising oil prices.

“My little visit . . . convinced me that it’s everybody that’s being hurt by this aggression,” he said.

PRESIDENT BUSH’S TRAVEL PLANS

Nov. 16: Left Washington

Nov. 17: Arrived in Prague

Nov. 18: Stops in Ludwigshafen, Germany

Nov. 18: Arrives in Paris for CSCE* meeting

Spends Thanksgiving day in Saudi Arabia with troops

Nov. 22-23: Cairo, Egypt

Nov. 23: Returns to Washington

* Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe--a gathering of 34 nations to discuss disarmament and national security issues.