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

DATE: TUESDAY, February 26, 1991                   TAG: 9102260013
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BUDAPEST, HUNGARY                                LENGTH: Medium

WARSAW PACT ENDS

The Warsaw Pact effectively went out of business Monday, ending a 35-year confrontation with NATO that divided Europe between the two alliances and created history's costliest arms race.

Defense and foreign ministers of Warsaw Pact members formally dissolved the East Bloc alliance's military functions in a 20-minute ceremony at a luxury Western hotel on the Danube River.

Countries signing the agreement - the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania - agreed to meet in Prague by July 1 to disband the alliance's remaining structures.

A meeting planned later this week in Budapest to disband Comecon, the Soviet-led equivalent of the European Common Market, was postponed indefinitely.

Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh and Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov of the Soviet Union looked glum as they put their names to the document ending the alliance Moscow forged in 1955 as a counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

By contrast, Jiri Dienstbier and Lubos Dobrovsky of Czechoslovakia smiled broadly. Both men, foreign and defense minister respectively, are former dissidents who fought the orthodox Communist regime imposed by a Warsaw Pact invasion that ended the liberal "Prague Spring" of 1968.

"The military bloc system as such has come to an end today," Foreign Minister Geza Jeszensky of Hungary told reporters after the ceremony.

Poland's foreign minister, Krzysztof Skubiszewski, said: "When you deprive the Warsaw Treaty of its military essence, it becomes more or less an empty shell."

by CNB