Word: czech
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Less than three years after Czechoslovakia's "velvet revolution," the country announced the preliminary terms of a "velvet divorce." Slovak Vladimir Meciar and Czech Vaclav Klaus, whose parties gained pluralities in their respective republics in elections earlier this month, agreed last week to form an interim federal government. It will function chiefly as a liquidation committee for the 74-year-old state, and by Sept. 30 the details creating separate Czech and Slovak republics should be ironed...
...agreement came in a fourth marathon negotiating session between the two in the Slovak capital Bratislava. For Klaus the split means being Prime Minister of a Czech republic committed to the deep economic reforms he has advocated as federal Finance Minister since 1989, rather than Prime Minister of a rancorous Czechoslovakia...
...heavy heart," it was Klaus who pushed for resolution of the talks in the interest of limiting economic damage caused by continued uncertainty. Meciar insisted that Slovakia, the eastern third of Czechoslovakia, could be an "international subject" on its own while remaining part of a loose confederation with the Czech republic. To Klaus that sounded like neither fish nor fowl. With the strong federation he sought out of reach, he pushed for a clean split -- even as Meciar suggested that the pact "still does not mean the end of the common state...
...what used to be Yugoslavia, the breakaway states of Croatia and Bosnia formed a military alliance against Serbia, a move that is likely to escalate the fighting in the Balkans. The country that used to call itself Czechoslovakia has already split up its name: it's now the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic. That last word will soon be plural, for both Czechs and Slovaks agreed on Saturday to create separate states by the end of September. In what used to be the U.S.S.R., old feuds flared anew in the Caucasus...
Prime Minister-designate Vaclav Klaus, whose Civic Democratic Party won the largest number of votes in the Czech republic, met with Meciar in two rounds of talks that ended with mutual accusations of intransigence. "The other side refuses to accept anything we are proposing," said Klaus, who has the support of Havel, the country's first postcommunist President. Part of the problem is that Slovaks believe their economically depressed republic bears the brunt of Klaus' radical proposals for privatization and austerity. But several thousand Czechs signed petitions in Prague calling for an independent Czech republic, complaining that Slovaks were backward...