Czech leader rejects Prague Spring comparison

Aug 15, 2008, 14:45 GMT

Prague - Czech President Vaclav Klaus rejects comparisons between Russia's military assault in Georgia and the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, a newspaper reported Friday.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised the comparison before a trip Friday to Tbilisi for talks with pro-US Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on the week-old crisis.

'No, that doesn't work,' Klaus told the Prague-based Mlada Fronta Dnes newspaper. 'Dubcek was no Saakashvili.'

The late Alexander Dubcek was the communist party chief who led Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring reform movement, which Warsaw Pact troops ended with an August 21, 1968 invasion.

In her comments before leaving Washington, Rice said times had changed.

'This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbours, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed,' she told reporters.

But Klaus said calling Russia the aggressor in the Georgian conflict 'is too simple a view of the world.'

In a Czech radio interview, he condemned 'the Georgian attack on South Ossetia, the killing of civilians in the region and the massive Russian army deployment.'