Czechs Rally in Support of New Regime

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia--Sirens wailed, horns honked and bells pealed at noon yesterday in Prague and other cities to mark a dramatic opposition victory that ended the Communists' 41-year domination of the government.

Around Prague's Wenceslas Square, the site of huge pro-democracy protests the last three weeks, thousands of Christmas shoppers and workers on lunch break joined in the three-minute demonstration of support, ringing tiny bells or shaking sets of keys.

On Sunday, in his last act as president, Gustav Husak swore in a Cabinet whose members include people he had jailed or stripped of all but the most menial jobs. The new Cabinet gave the country its first government dominated by non-Communists since 1948.

Czechoslovak army units yesterday began pulling down barbed wire fencing along a 20-mile stretch of its border with Austria. After the first stretch of the fence was cut away and rolled up, officials from both countries met on the open border near the Austrian town of Wullowitz to shake hands.

Yesterday's brief demonstrations in Czechoslovakia took the place of a general strike that was called off Sunday by opposition leaders after their stunning success in overturning Communist domination of the government.

In Brno, opposition leaders said the noontime action was to show support for opposition leader Vaclav Havel, who is considered a favorite to succeed Husak. Posters plastered throughout central Prague showed a smiling Havel with the caption, "Havel to the Castle," a reference to the seat of the presidency.

On Sunday, the 53-year-old playwright told a cheering crowd of 100,000 in Prague that the new government was "a great success."

"This peaceful revolution was....against violence, dirt, mafias, privileges, persecutions," the once-banned playwright said in the nationally televised speech. "Let us preserve its purity, peacefulness, love and merry, friendly flair."

The new "government of national understanding" contains 10 Communists, two of whom enjoy opposition support, seven non-party members and two members each from the small Socialist and People's parties, which recently broke with the Communists.

It includes two men who just weeks ago were persecuted as dissidents.

In a key compromise, the Interior Ministry, which runs the nation's hated secret and uniformed police, will be run jointly by a former dissident, the new Communist premier and a Communist Party member proposed by the opposition.