Coming Apart

Election results edge Czechoslovakia along the road of ethnic dissolution

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.

Prime Minister-designate Vaclav Klaus, whose Civic Democratic Party won the largest number of votes in the Czech republic, met with Meciar in...

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