
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 5, 1991                   TAG: 9102050050
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PRAGUE, CZECHOSLOVAKIA                                LENGTH: Short

2 NATIONS THREATEN TO LEAVE PACT

Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria threatened Monday to withdraw from any military command or maneuvers in the moribund Warsaw Pact by the end of the month unless a summit is scheduled to discuss the pact's future.

President Vaclav Havel said after talks with Bulgarian President Zhelyu Zhelev that both want a summit, postponed last November at Soviet request, to take place this month. No new date for the summit has been set.

"We want the political committee of the pact to meet by the end of February and adopt a decision on liquidation of its military structures," Havel said.

"If such a meeting does not take place, we will probably withdraw from the military structures by the same date," Havel said. However, he added that consultations were needed with other Warsaw Pact members in Eastern Europe.

Zhelev also called for such talks.

Havel said the pact - Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and the Soviet Union - as a political alliance should "cease to exist by the end of this year or by next spring at latest."

Last month, in the wake of the Soviet military crackdown in the Baltics, Czechoslovakia urged Poland and Hungary to speed negotiations on withdrawing from the pact.

However, Poland, which borders Lithuania, was reluctant to link the two issues.

by CNB