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SURVEY OF CZECH PRESS

PRAGUE, June 5 (ÇTK) - Czech President Václav Havel has some reservations about the draft law on the Constitutional Court, the independent daily +Mladá fronta Dnes+ writes today. It quotes Havel's spokesman Ladislav ˘paçek as saying that Havel

finds it "running counter to system principles" that high

treason is defined by the bill. He thinks the bill should define

more precisely the phenomenon of high treason, for which the

president could be prosecuted by the Constitutional Court,

˘paçek is quoted as saying.

In the right-leaning daily +Telegraf+, Czech Justice

Minister Ji í Novák refers to his recent statement on an

intended legal regulation to punish "laundering of dirty (tax

evading) money". Novák favours enabling prosecuting bodies to

gain information from the banking sphere even before a

prosecution is launched. This should also concern financial

admistrative bodies, which register taxation and fee payments.

"It would be the prosecutor or a judge who would authorise

gaining such information," Novák adds.

Chairman of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia

(KSÇM) Ji í Svoboda says in +Rudé právo+ he is considering

establishing a Socialist Party of Bohemia and Moravia. He admits

that the party might be founded at a forthcoming KSÇM congress

to take place June 26. Svoboda did not rule out a possibility of

his meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in the immediate future.

As many as 1,447 officers were fired from the Czech Army in

the first five months of 1993, the farmers' daily +Zemędęlské

noviny+ writes, referring to figures given by Czech Defence

Deputy Minister Ji í Pospí il. Over 15 per cent of the officers

fired worked at the Czech Defence Ministry or on the Czech

Army's general staff. Some 455 officers left the army in May, a

month before the tests for officers' physical abilites

commenced, the daily notes.

An article published in today's supplement to the

independent daily +Lidové noviny+ focuses on the fact that the

Czech Interior Ministry sold some data from the ministery's

Central Register of Citizens. Drawing from this data, some firms

sent samples of their products to specific addresses. The daily

finds it strange that the state has disclosed the data, which it

gained through the citizens' duty to report certain personal

information). The paper raises the question whether or not the

law on protection of personal data is sufficient. It calls on

the Czech parliament to discuss the possible consequences of the

fact that the ministry "enabled a single agency to buy a

significant part of the state system of registering citizens".

Jaroslav Boçek, editor-in-chief of +Svobodné slovo+, the daily close to the former Czechoslovak Socialist Party (ÇSS, which changed into the Liberal Social National Party, LSNS, at a

congress last weekend), says in an interview published by the

trade union daily +Práce+ that he expects to be fired from his

post. He informed newly elected LSNS Chairman Pavel Hir that he quit the party because he disapproved of the fact that the

participants in the congress rejected any political discussion

and approved an "undemocratic part of the (new LSNS -ed.)

rules". The party's new name is "political babble", since a

liberal cannot be at the same time a national socialist, +Práce+ quotes Boçek as saying.

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SURVEY OF SLOVAK PRESS

BRATISLAVA, June 5 (ÇTK) - The Slovak government has no

concept for a policy toward minorities, the independent daily

+Národná obroda+ writes. On the other hand, representatives of

the Hungarian minority are putting forth their protests through

individuals whose influence in the Council of Europe is

indisputable. "Norms for internal relations rest in many

countries on their laws on minorities, whose regulations

specifically determine the position of minorities in

self-administration, education, culture and other areas," the

daily writes.

The author of the commentary says he thinks that the

constitutional bill proposed by the Coexistence-Hungarian

Christian Democratic Party (MKDH) coalition will not go through.

The Democratic Left Party (SDL) and the office of President

Michal Kováç are preparing their own versions of such a law.

The author says he is convinced that an agreeable solution will

be found, but that every delay only increases the nervousness of

both sides.

In Hungary there are no separate Slovak schools, and members

of a Slovak delegation had to use interpreters, Minister of

Education Matú Kuçera says in the same paper. In an interview

after his return from Hungary, Kuçera says that no

confrontations took place with their Hungarian counterparts, and

that a department of Slovak Studies will be founded at the

Pedagogic School in Békésczaba.

In the daily +Smena+, whose views are close to those of the ruling HZDS, the rector of Comenius University in Bratislava,

Juraj ˘vec, writes that the Ministry of Education has too many

responsibilites to be able to function effectively. He writes

that if the ministry were to divide into a ministry for higher

education and science and one for basic and secondary education,

he could take the leadership of one of them himself. He turns

down for the second time, however, Premier Vladimír Meçiar's

suggestion that he join the government.

In the Sunday supplement to the trade union daily +Práca+,

former Czech premier Petr Pithart writes that with the

Czechoslovak federation divided, both sides are needing to

strengthen their arguments that the split was legitimate. As

examples of their attempts to do this, he cites the Czech

refusal to issue stock in privatised companies to Slovak

shareholders, the controversy over their mutual debt, and

Meçiar's comments in the German weekly +Der Spiegel+ regarding

cutting off the Czech Republic's oil supply. Regarding

Slovakia's current political situation, Pithart writes that he

does not think confidence in the ruling Movement for a

Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and its chairman, Vladimír Meçiar,

will decline to the point of reaching a peaceful transfer of

power.

It took nine months for the Slovak government to take a

clear stand on Slovakia's orientation toward the democracies of

the West, the Hungarian language daily +ůj Szó+ writes, and even

that declaration was made through "clenched teeth." The daily

notes that exactly a year after the parliamentary elections

Meçiar went to the aluminum factory in Ćiar nad Hronom, central

Slovakia, where, however, he said nothing specific about the

economic situation. "Workers at the meeting had to feel that

their 'ineffective socialist ogre' had a possibility of

survival. What is to be done when our government continues to

flirt with socialism?" the daily asks in conclusion.