Czech Communist Leaders Attack ’68 Invasion : East Bloc: Critics say the party statement falls short. Talks on a new Cabinet are under way.

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia —  This nation’s Communist leaders, trying to avoid total collapse of their once-dominant party, approved an “action program” Friday that labels the 1968 invasion by Warsaw Pact forces as “unjustified” and the decision behind it as wrong.

The program was promptly criticized as failing to go far enough in its assessment of the invasion or in its proposals for democratizing the party.

The exchange in Prague took place amid intense negotiations between the opposition group Civic Forum and Communist authorities, who have pledged to nominate by Sunday a new government that is expected to have a rough balance between Communists and non-Communists.

If Civic Forum accepts the nominations, the new government will rule on an interim basis until free, multiparty parliamentary elections. The leader of the small Czechoslovak Socialist Party said he expects the elections to take place between June and October next year.

If Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec’s nominations are not acceptable, Civic Forum has vowed to demand the government’s resignation and has offered to organize another.

The Communist leadership, aware that Communist parties in Hungary and Poland have virtually disintegrated under the pressure for democratic reform, is trying to avoid the same fate with a combination of real reforms and an aggressive public relations program.

However, a televised confrontation Friday, at which Civic Forum representatives were booed by some of the 2,000 delegates to a convention of cooperative farm officials, served as a reminder that there are still people, particularly in the countryside, who would derail the move toward democracy.

The delegates, 72% of them Communists, represented a sampling of what reformers here say are the most conservative party officials in the country.

Conservative Lauded

An army officer who urged the government to “prosecute those who insulted the head of state and the head of the army” received a tumultuous standing ovation.

He apparently referred to opposition demands that President Gustav Husak resign and that the new government include a civilian defense minister. Husak was party chief from soon after the 1968 invasion until 1987. His presidential term expires in May, but Civic Forum declared earlier this week that he should resign by Dec. 10.

Despite the extraordinary political change that has swept over Czechoslovakia in the last two weeks, the complex situation within the party is still a cause of nervousness. Adamec appears to have gained considerable influence during this period, but it is still not clear whether he considers his primary loyalty to rest with the party or the people.

Only three of the 13 members of the party’s top leadership were in the Presidium as recently as eight days ago, before two extraordinary sessions of he policy-making Central Committee carried out a purge of hard-liners.

Now, party leaders seem to be trying to outdo each other and even Civic Forum in their public commitment to reform.

The policy toward the 1968 invasion, which ended the reform movement known as “Prague Spring,” is thus a crucial litmus test.

Nearly 400,000 Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops intervened at the time in what is still the largest military action on the European continent since the end of World War II.

“We are of the opinion that the entry into our territory of five armies of the Warsaw Treaty states in 1968 was not justified, and the decision to do it was wrong,” said party Presidium member Vasil Mohorita at a press conference Friday to announce the draft “action program.”

He said a party commission has begun looking back into events surrounding the incident “so we can critically re-examine our approach to these questions.”

A senior Western diplomat said the party has little choice but to disassociate itself from the invasion since even the Soviet Union is in the process of doing just that. Czech television late Friday reported a rumor that Alexander Dubcek, the former party leader who initiated the 1968 reforms, had left for Moscow.

Hungary and Poland have previously expressed their regret about the intervention, and on Friday, East Germany joined the penitents.

“East Germany’s Parliament, in accordance with the views of the country, sincerely regrets its part in the events of 1968 and asks the Czech people for forgiveness,” it said.

An official Soviet apology would leave only Bulgaria as unrepentant among the invading countries.

Barely had Mohorita made his statement Friday when Rudolf Prevratil, spokesman for the newly formed Democratic Forum of Communists told the same press conference that his group favored stronger wording.

“Since the very birth of our forum, we say we condemn the intervention of Warsaw Pact armies in 1968 and we condemn” the Czech party’s subsequent assessment of the invasion as justified to put down a counterrevolution, he said.

Asked his reaction to the party’s move, Jiri Dienstbier, spokesman for the opposition Civic Forum, shrugged it off. “I really do not think I would like to comment,” he said. “What am I supposed to say when someone, after 20 years, approves of something that has been self-evident and common knowledge in this country for 20 years?”

Enshrining Principles

The party’s draft program, which must be ratified by an emergency party congress expected later this month or in January, will theoretically enshrine the principles meant to guide 1.7 million Communists organized in 50,000 party cells in every town, village, and workplace in the country.

The document approved Friday by the party leadership said that while the party has verbally supported restructuring and democratization, “practically no changes have been carried out.”

It describes the Communist Party in the current situation as “one of the political parties (which) has to strive for its position in society as well as others have,” according to Mohorita. Parliament on Wednesday deleted from the Czechoslovak constitution the article that had assigned the party the “leading role” in society.

Mohorita said the new program means the party will no longer control the so-called Peoples’ Militia, will not interfere in the management of the mass media other than its own party publications, and “will only be able to influence all spheres of social life through the activities of its members working in” the society.

The program also condemns the practice of making party membership a prerequisite for “any function or career. . . . In the future our opinions won’t be considered automatically correct,” he said.

In an extraordinary insight into the control the party has long exercised here, former Prime Minister Lubomir Strougal revealed in televised comments Thursday night that even in his lofty post “almost every, even minor decision had to be approved by the party Presidium.”

In an address to the cooperative farmers Friday, party General Secretary Karel Urbanek, elected to the Presidium a year ago and to his present post just last week, blamed his predecessors for their “inconsistency, imperfection, unwillingness to carry out fundamental changes, inability to see things realistically, respect opinions from below and accept truth.”