Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 25, 1990 TAG: 9003252053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: VILNIUS, LITHUANIA LENGTH: Medium
Lithuania's president, Vytautas Landsbergis, urged the young Lithuanian men, who fled the army after their republic proclaimed its independence on March 11, to seek refuge in churches against a surrender deadline of midnight Saturday night set by the Soviet military.
"We will not sacrifice our sons," said Ceslovas Stankevicius, deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Parliament, defiant in the latest tense standoff over Lithuania's contested sovereignty. "They are citizens of a free country."
Contrary to reports on Soviet television, Lithuania was anything but chaotic or seething with unrest on Saturday.
Elections to city, county, and neighborhood councils were conducted calmly throughout the republic, with a turnout estimated at about two-thirds of the electorate.
But Landsbergis called on the United States and other Western nations on Saturday to be more vocal in their support of Lithuania "in this dangerous situation," which he characterized as "psychological war."
In an emotional speech to Parliament, Landsbergis recalled how the deputies were working into the early morning hours when they learned of the unexpected military convoy headed into the capital.
The column wound provocatively past the Parliament building and many of the deputies ran outside to watch it.
"Last night's session was unique," Landsbergis said. "We will not forget it for a long time. We felt we were really in an occupied country."
Speaking to reporters later, Landsbergis, looking weary from nearly continuous parliamentary and private consultations over the stalemate with Moscow, said that if violence was incited in Lithuania, it "could explode all the Soviet Union."
President Mikhail Gorbachev has made no public comment on the Lithuanian deadlock since Thursday, when he issued the latest in a series of presidential decrees ordering stepped up security, surrender of private weapons, and protection of Soviet property.
One of his decrees demanded a halt to registration of volunteers for a Lithunanian defense force.
Landsbergis said that suggestions in Moscow that army deserters were being directed into these new formations were deliberate distortions.
He warned the young military evaders that the republic would not use force to defend them.
The Soviet military views the flight as a major breach of discipline that could cause members of other ethnic minorities to leave the ranks unless the desertions are stopped quickly.
by CNB