PRAGUE : Ready for Reform?

Czechoslovaks on Friday and Saturday will elect a new Parliament, one that politicians say could affect the direction of economic reform.

Pro-reform forces, led by the center-right party of Finance Minister Vaclav Klaus, hold the upper hand in most surveys in the Czech republic.

But in Slovakia, where there is a recession and nationalist concerns have become a political tool, the leading parties are demanding a new economic program tailored to the republic’s “special conditions”--a moribund state-run industrial base and growing unemployment.

The result, observers say, is likely to be a parliamentary stand-off between the “leftists” of Slovakia and the Czech reformers and a protracted wrangle to construct a coalition to run the federal government.