Word: czechoslovakias
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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...
...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...
Though he said he agreed to the split "with a 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...
BELIEVERS IN A UNIFIED CZECHOSLOVAKIA MAY NOW regret that Vaclav Havel's 1989 "velvet revolution" wasn't the "Velcro revolution" instead. Parliamentary elections have revealed deepening differences between Czechs and Slovaks, thus increasing the chances that the 74-year-old federation will become unstitched like the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Last week, after the autonomy-seeking Movement for a Democratic Slovakia topped the polling in the Slovak republic, the group's leader, Vladimir Meciar, pressed his demand for a total rearrangement of Czech-Slovak relations...
...Pearl Harbor was a shock. Now Britain's fight was our fight," says Friedburg. "We wrote letters to newspapers, talked to groups and to senators, and we brought students to Harvard from Czechoslovakia...