Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 1, 1990 TAG: 9004010060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
He did not specify what the consequences would be, but hinted at economic and political sanctions, not military action. Soviet troops deployed in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, have over the past week occupied several Communist Party buildings, the republican prosecutor's office and early Saturday the main newspaper publishing house.
Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis branded Gorbachev's warning "extremely harsh and vindictive" but said the "unexpected" message would be taken up by the Parliament Monday.
In his three-page statement, read on Soviet television Saturday night, Gorbachev attempted to bypass the Lithuanian leadership by appealing directly to the 3.7 million people in the Baltic republic.
"The attempts being made by the incumbent Lithuanian leadership to break the republic's ties with the Soviet Union and its tactics of unilateral and ultimative actions endanger the normal life and security of all people in the republic, Lithuanians and non-Lithuanians, and are a cause of grave concern in the country," Gorbachev said.
He said the republic's actions have caused "just indignation all over the country."
"People demand that the U.S.S.R. constitution be defended and that the union be protected from the harm caused by the actions of separatists. They propose taking effective economic, political and administrative measures," Gorbachev said.
"If the voice of reason is not heeded now, developments can have grave consequences for all of us," he said. "We must be united in striving to prevent this."
At the same time, as agreed Friday at the first session of the new Federation Council, the Soviet leader sent a harshly worded message to the Lithuanian Parliament, accusing it of taking a "ruinous road" in the March 11 act restoring the republic's pre-1940 statehood.
He proposed that it cancel its "illegal acts" and said such a move would make possible "discussing the entire range of problems" on the basis of the Soviet constitution.
Landsbergis, replying on local television, said Gorbachev should heed the many calls of foreign governments to begin negotiations with Lithuania.
"We have repeatedly offered this, but our extended hand is rejected," Landsbergis said, according to the republic's information office. "Now it is being rejected with extremely harsh and vindictive words."
Soviet militiamen armed with night sticks occupied the editorial offices and printing plant of Lithuania's major newspapers early Saturday morning.
About 10 a.m., Soviet troops expelled officials of the independent Lithuanian Communist Party from the party's Central Committee building, completing a takeover on behalf of the minority Communists who remain loyal to Moscow, said the Lithuanian government information bureau.
Despite the combination of threatening words and actions from Moscow, it appeared far from certain that Lithuania would give ground.
"Our laws will not be rescinded, I can assure you of that," Vaidotas Antanaitis, an environmentalist and newly appointed minister of the timber industry, said by telephone from his home in Kaunas.
One Lithuanian in Vilnius sounded unimpressed by the appeal.
"Gorbachev understands people's aspiration for freedom when it's in some other state - Namibia, say," physicist Donatas Jurevicius said from his home in Vilnius. "But when it's his own country, he doesn't get it."
Jurevicius added: "I don't think the Parliament will ever cancel [the independence declaration]. And I think that even if people are tired of the tension, they won't want to go back."
Landsbergis and the Lithuanians are driven by painful memories of the Soviet occupation in 1940 and the merciless repression that followed. Lithuanian sources say 40,000 people were executed, 70,000 died in 10 years of armed resistance and more than 400,000 were exiled to Siberia, many dying of exposure, hunger and disease.
Gorbachev and his colleagues are accused by some Lithuanians of retaining the spirit of empire. But the Soviet leader clearly fears the bloodshed that could result if a series of multinational republics unilaterally secede, with no preparation and no accommodation for Russians and other non-natives who may want to move.
The standoff is now entering its fourth week. The only violence to date occurred when Soviet troops seized and beat Lithuanian deserters from the Soviet Army who had taken refuge in a psychiatric hospital.
Rallies were held Saturday in Moscow and in the Ukraine in support of the Lithuanians, but the Moscow rally served mainly to show that backing for Lithuania's unilateral secession is fairly thin.
by CNB