Prague- The top US and Czech diplomats, Condoleezza Rice and Karel Schwarzenberg, took a seat at a majestic period table earlier this week when they inked a deal to build a US missile shield base in the Czech Republic.

They reportedly had no clue that the piece of furniture had been a witness to an earlier pact welcoming foreign troops onto Czech territory.

Mlada Fronta Dnes daily observed Thursday that the Soviet and Czechoslovak premiers, Alexey Kosygin and Oldrich Cernik, used the same table 40 years earlier to sign an accord affirming the Soviet occupation of then Czechoslovakia.

"It is not in my power to know what furniture was used when. The table is not to blame," the newspaper cited Schwarzenberg as saying.

The Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops invaded then Czechoslovakia in August 1968 to quash the Prague Spring, a short-lived movement to reform the ill-functioning communist regime.

The Soviet occupation, now seen as a traumatic period in country's history, had lasted for more than two decades. (dpa)