NEWS ANALYSIS : Czech, Slovak Leaders Inch Back From Edge : Breakup: As ramifications of a ‘velvet divorce’ sink in, both sides leave room for reconciliation.

Czech and Slovak leaders kept saying Saturday that the breakup of their 74-year-old union as the state of Czechoslovakia looks all but inevitable.

Yet however difficult it may be to avoid the “velvet divorce” that seems impending three years after the “velvet revolution,” the leaders on both sides seem to have left some wiggle room to escape the split.

On the surface, both Vladimir Meciar, the driving Slovak force, and Vaclav Klaus, the Czech leader, have set out distinct and differing objectives from which they have not publicly budged.

Meciar wants what he calls a “looser” confederation that would give Slovakia control over its economy, and he wants recognition from international bodies, such as the United Nations, as an expression of Slovak “sovereignty.”

Klaus, on the other hand, wants a unified federal economic policy. He sees the Meciar formula as unworkable and reflects a widespread view among the Czechs that the Slovaks want Czech economic support to prop up their troubled industrial base while continuing with what the Czechs argue is essentially a holdover socialist economic policy.

After 14 hours of negotiation, the two leaders announced early Saturday that the regional governments of the two republics would work out a final agreement for the country’s future by Sept. 30.

But that announcement, while clearly moving a step closer to the brink of dissolution of the joint state, still left open the possibility that the federation could survive.

“It’s the end of a stage,” Meciar told journalists after the marathon meeting, “but not the end of the state.”

And Klaus added, “We are initiating only the process . . . the mechanism, and it is not necessary that the Czech National Council and the Slovak National Council have the same views on the result.”

Meciar also noted, “There had been a danger that we would not agree at all, that there would occur a constitutional crisis and that the federation would disintegrate from its own momentum, and that is something we wanted to prevent.”

The time frame discussed by both leaders seems to extend well into the next year for a final dissolution of the state, although, as their Saturday agreement suggests, an outline of the decision’s broader details could be hammered out by the national councils in both republics.

The upshot, then, is that there is still room to pull back from the precipice.

President Vaclav Havel, who antagonized Meciar by what Meciar believed was a thinly veiled attack on him during the recent election campaign, has been unable to enter the negotiations effectively, and the Slovak leader has made it clear that his HZDS party, and its coalition allies in the federal Parliament, would block a second term for Havel as president.

But most observers feel that Havel would remain as the head of state in the Czech lands, where his popularity is still overwhelming.

“The way I know myself,” he said last week, “I know you will not get me out of politics easily, and I will not desert my people.”

Under the present arrangement, there is no office of president for the Czech republic, but if the split goes through a new constitution will have to be written and the esteem with which the former dissident and playwright is held among the Czechs means the office is virtually certain to be created.

In a sense, the initiative in the last 10 days has fallen to the hard-nosed Klaus team, leading the negotiations for the Czech side, and there is a widespread sense among many observers that Klaus has called Meciar’s bluff on the secession issue and that now Meciar is playing for time.

For example, Meciar still speaks of holding a referendum, which he says cannot be held before the end of the year--time enough, he says, to prepare the voters. Even his Slovak supporters, which gave his party 35% of the vote in June 5-6 parliamentary elections, are aware that opinion surveys taken over the last year show margins of 70% to 80% in favor of keeping the federation together.

Moreover, there are deep splits in the Slovak side over economics as well as the separation issue.

Jan Carnogursky, the Slovak prime minister and head of the Christian Democrats, was once the leading nationalist voice in Slovakia but now counsels for a delay. And, unlike Meciar, he is a dedicated market reformer, much in the manner that Klaus has led market reforms and privatization for the federal government.

Peter Weiss, leader of the Slovak Democratic Left Party, which was born out of the discredited Communist Party but has rejected hard-line Marxist doctrine, also argues for continued unity: “We need a common state in some basic form; we need each other both economically and geopolitically.”

These voices are likely to be heard more clearly as the politicians in the Slovak National Council begin to deal with the grimy details of dividing property in a breakup.

Most of them realize that Slovakia, with its strong dependence on outmoded heavy industry, will wind up as the economic poor relation of the Czechs, who make up two-thirds of the 15.5 million population of the present federation.

The Czechs, next door to the Germans, who are heavily investing in Czech business, can be expected to move far more quickly toward integration with Western Europe.

The Slovaks, on the other hand, will be left with no clear border to the West. They may have further trouble on their hands with a Hungarian minority of 800,000, which has become uncomfortable with the nationalist political rhetoric of the past year. The Hungarian government is watching the situation with concern.

As the negotiations continue over the coming weeks, analysts say, the costs to both sides are likely to become more apparent to the politicians and force both Slovaks and Czechs to search for a workable compromise.

“We are not predetermining the results of the negotiations,” Klaus said Saturday, a caveat that could have growing significance. “We have the duty only to create the process of the negotiations. If (the split) were to occur, it should be as friendly and smooth as possible.”

Times staff writer Powers reported from Warsaw, and special correspondent Drapalova reported from Prague.