All quiet on the Polish front -- for the time being; Poles brace for more flak

The Poles may be in for another dressing-down in Prague this week during the congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. And not just from Czechoslovak leaders, who have been among the sternest critics of events here all along. The Soviets' own party chief, President Brezhnev is going to be there, too.

His decision to attend the congress is not in itself surprising. He has been a regular visitor to Prague since he ordered the Warsaw Pact intervention against the Dubcek reformers in 1968.

But the evident increase in Soviet pressures on the Polish leaders -- both before Warsaw's inconclusive March 29 plenum, which rejected rank and file demands to remove those who oppose reform from the Politburo, and since -- suggests that Mr. Brezhnev may use the Prague platform for a further warning.

Enough East European leaders will be there to provide an occasion for a full-dress indictment of the Poles. Only the Romanians are at all likely to demur.

The Soviet party congress in February had provided a similar occasion in Moscow, but at that time the Soviets chose to hold an admonitory tete-a-tete with the Polish delegation.

The Polish parliament was scheduled to meet Monday, but that meeting has been postponed until the end of the week, because, it is said, Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski is indisposed.

It is possible that the delay was prompted by the Polish party leaders' wish to head off further criticism in fresh talks with Mr. Brezhnev before coming out with a promised program on censorship, labor laws, and other pendi ng reforms.