Czechoslovakia to Split Up in ‘Velvet Divorce’

Czech and Slovak leaders agreed early today to split Czechoslovakia into two independent nations, ending a 74-year-old federation of their two peoples.

Emerging from several hours of negotiations, Czech leader Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar, the most powerful man in the Slovak lands, told reporters the Czech and Slovak parliaments would decide how to dissolve Czechoslovakia.

The legislative process would begin in both parliaments Sept. 30, they said.

The Slovak side had wanted a referendum on independence early next year, which would have postponed the federation’s collapse until the end of 1993.

But the wealthier Czechs, eager to transform their republic into a thriving capitalist state, feared that any delay in negotiations would only hamper their integration with the West.

Klaus, the victor in June 5-6 elections in the Czech lands, told reporters that “a referendum is not impossible but also not obligatory” under the separation plan the two sides have agreed upon.

After talks Wednesday in Prague, both Klaus and Meciar, who won the elections in Slovakia, acknowledged their failure to reach agreement that could save the federation of 16 million people, founded in 1918 from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

“The fact that we have different long-term goals is obvious,” Klaus said at the time.

Experts from both sides spent Thursday working out details for a caretaker federal government to oversee the divorce.

Klaus said today that the caretaker government would be charged with creating conditions for the transformation of Czechoslovakia into “two sovereign states with international status.”

He said the interim government would have 10 members instead of the present 16. The present 13 ministries would be streamlined to five--defense, finance, exterior, interior and economics, he said.

Slovakia, the poorer eastern third of the federation, has been hit hardest by ambitious reforms initiated by Klaus, who has been President Vaclav Havel’s finance minister. Klaus wants to convert Czechoslovakia to capitalism quickly.