Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 25, 1990 TAG: 9004250237
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
In Washington, President Bush delayed carrying out a threat to take action against Moscow, fearing sanctions might undermine President Mikhail Gorbachev and worsen the crisis.
"I am concerned that we not do anything that would cause the Soviet Union to take action that would set back the cause of freedom around the world," Bush said.
The White House said the situation would have to worsen greatly before Bush imposed sanctions.
The KGB's Border Guards moved more troops into Lithuania following orders from Gorbachev to secure its borders, a spokesman said, and are closely controlling all movement into the republic.
Soviet officials, meanwhile, told the official news agency Tass that the central government is prepared to exercise its right to be the exclusive importer of any goods into the Soviet Union - and thus thwart any Lithuanian efforts to buy oil and raw materials abroad to compensate for supplies that have been curtailed or cut off as part of the Kremlin's economic pressure on the republic.
The moves increased the pressure on Lithuania to abandon its declaration of independence and to negotiate its secession on the central government's terms - within the framework of the Soviet constitution and on a timetable that permits Gorbachev to stem the breakup of the Soviet Union through political and economic reforms.
But a Lithuanian delegation, sent to Moscow to meet with senior Kremlin officials to discuss opening negotiations, was told Tuesday that nobody of appropriate rank was available to see them.
"We have come to talk, but there seems to be no one here we can meet," Bronislavas Kuzmitskas, the delegation head and a deputy chairman of the republic's Parliament, said. "We get excuses, evasions or simply no answers when the telephone rings."
In Lithuania, life slowed even more under the curtailment of energy supplies and raw materials. Traffic in Vilnius, the capital, was reduced to trolley buses, taxis and a few official cars.
Factories have fuel supplies for no more than five days and the whole economy is quickly being paralyzed, Lithuanian officials said.
The republic hopes to replace some of the reduced supplies, especially oil, with imports, but the twin announcements of strict controls on strategic imports and the KGB's increased border patrols appear to be a warning that the central government will oppose that.
Officials in Moscow said that Soviet facilities, including the oil terminal at the Lithuanian port at Klaipeda and railway tank cars, would not handle any Lithuanian purchases not authorized by the central government.
by CNB