The peaceful demise of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1991 boosted security in Europe and helped unify the continent, Czech leaders said on Monday marking 20 years since the end of the Cold War.
Vaclav Havel, famed Czech anti-communist dissident and former Czechoslovak and Czech President, issued a statement recalling the speedy talks with eastern and western leaders preceding the Pact’s swift demise.
“It was clear that we had to do something, that we must decide... and that there was not much time to think,” said the 74-year-old former dissident playwright and hero of the 1989 Velvet Revolution in then-Czechoslovakia.
Mr Havel could not attend the conference in Prague on Monday marking the 20th anniversary due to health problems.
“As a representative of the country presiding over the Warsaw Pact at that time, I was the chairman at the closing summit in Prague and I announced to the whole world: ‘The Warsaw Pact ceases to exist from now on’,” Mr Havel recalled.
“It is clear that (the fall of the pact) boosted security in Europe... and enabled the unification of Germany but above all of Europe – a process that is not over yet,” Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said at the conference.
“We have to pay tribute to the officials on both sides who behaved in a very responsible way... the whole global-shaping process was quiet, peaceful, non-violent,” he added.
Founded in 1955, the Warsaw Pact was abandoned on July 1, 1991 after a wave of popular movements toppled communism in former Soviet satellites including East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and the then-Czechoslovakia.
Alexandr Vondra, Czech Defence Minister and former anti-communist dissident, said the Warsaw Pact had lost “any raison d’etre” after the fall of communism in central and eastern European countries.
“Since it had been established in 1955, this military pact was above all an instrument of power with which Moscow held its satellites under control,” Mr Vondra said before giving the floor to an ex-Russian ambassador reading a message from then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.