Czechoslovakia's new Communist leaders, beset by growing pressure from hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding reforms, said Saturday they would hold a fresh round of crisis talks Sunday.
The official CTK news agency said the ruling Politburo had summoned a meeting of the party's Central Committee to discuss "topical, political and organizational issues."Seven Politburo members were dropped at a Central Committee session Friday called to discuss more than a week of street challenges to Communist rule by the opposition Civic Forum. Two newly re-elected Politburo members were forced out Saturday.
The announcement of a new Central Committee meeting came after the party's new leader, Karel Urbanek, who took over Friday from hard-liner Milos Jakes, offered a political dialogue to opponents.
Urbanek said on television that the party had become "isolated from the people and the truth."
Shortly before Urbanek spoke, some 500,000 people protested in Prague and another 100,000 in Bratislava in the largest show of popular strength in the country's 71-year history, capping nine days of demonstrations.
Alexander Dubcek, the reformer ousted after Warsaw Pact tanks crushed his "Prague Spring" movement in 1968, was shown for the first time live on national television as he addressed a sea of flag-waving, roaring demonstrators at Letna field in northern Prague.
Urbanek broke with his predecessor's unyielding refusal to deal with independent political groups.
"I will deal with everybody in and out of the framework of the National Front who will give us any advice, help us with counsel if they would like to cooperate with us."
The National Front is dominated by the Communists. Jakes had refused to allow any dialogue outside of its scope.
Former leader Alexander Dubcek, whose "Prague Spring" reform movement was crushed by a Soviet-led invasion in 1968, dismissed Friday's shuffle of the Politburo as a "maneuver."
At the Prague parade ground where half a million people rallied in falling snow to back the Civic Forum, the country's leading opposition figure, playwright Vaclav Havel, de-nounced the new Politburo.
"We are now receiving verified reports that the new leadership of the party is a trick and that the instruments of power are being taken over by neo-Stalinists," he said. "These people may be dangerous but also incompetent."
Nine representatives of the umbrella opposition organization Civic Forum are to meet caretaker Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec Sunday for a second time, activist Michael Kocab told a news conference. Havel will be included, he said.
A 90-minute meeting Adamec held with four representatives Tuesday started a limited dialogue that was broken off while the party Central Committee met to drop seven members of its Politburo.
Adamec was among those dropped from the previous Politburo. He resigned both his party and government posts in protest against the way the new Politburo was chosen, leading activist Sasha Vondra said. He will stay on as a caretaker premier.
Havel and Dubcek appealed for support for Adamec at the Prague rally. They apparently want him to replace Urbanek as party chief.
Two members of the new Politburo were forced to quit Saturday. Miroslav Stepan and Miroslav Zavadil resigned only hours after being re-elected to the ruling Politburo at a 16-hour marathon Central Committee meeting ending in the early morning hours, state radio reported, quoting Committee Secretariat member Vasil Mohorita.
The Prague municipal party immediately revolted against the re-election of Stepan and Zavadil and called for an emergency nationwide party congress to bring in more reformers.
In Slovakia, party members were rebelling against the re-election of a third Politburo member, Jozef Lenart, state television said. In the Slovak capital, Bratislava, it showed more than 100,000 people protesting in the central Square of the Slovak Uprising.
Urbanek also offered an olive branch to the half million party members purged after the "Prague Spring" reforms were crushed, saying he would work with "even those who after 1968 left or had to leave the party."
In another conciliatory gesture, President Gustav Husak pardoned six leading dissidents, including two who have spent over eight years in prison.
They were Petr Uhl, Jiri Ruml, Rudolf Zeman, Frantisek Starek, Jan Carnogursky and Ivan Jirous.
Speaking at the municipal session earlier in the day, Urbanek praised the criticism voiced there, and said if it had come sooner the party would be in a better position.
"Urbanek may not be an ideal leader," one worker told the party meeting, "but Gorbachevs don't grow on trees."
Further protests were planned Sunday. More than 500 factories around the country have voted for a nationwide strike against the Communists' power monopoly Monday.
At an historic televised mass, Czechoslovakia's 90-year-old Roman Catholic primate Cardinal Frantisek Tomasek called on citizens to "combine courage and wisdom to prevent violence in these days.
"Nobody should stand aside in these important moments for the nation," he said.