World Notes HUNGARY

Poland has journalist Tadeusz Mazowiecki as Prime Minister. Czechoslovakia has playwright Vaclav Havel as President. Last week Hungary also put a writer at the helm. The parliament elected Arpad Goencz, an English translator and former dissident who spent six years in jail after the 1956 revolution, as the country's new interim and largely ceremonial President.

The center-right Hungarian Democratic Forum, which won 43% of the vote in last month's elections, agreed to support Goencz, a leader of the main opposition, liberal Alliance of Free Democrats, who then called on the Forum's leader to form a government. In return, the Forum exacted pledges from the Alliance to cooperate when laws require a two-thirds majority.