
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 30, 1990                   TAG: 9006300111
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: B4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

LITHUANIA SUSPENDS DECLARATION

Lithuania has agreed to suspend its declaration of independence for 100 days in exchange for negotiations with Moscow and lifting of economic sanctions.

The moratorium, which would begin at the outset of talks, was proposed Friday by the Lithuanian president, Vytautas Landsbergis, and approved by Parliament 69-35 with two abstentions.

There was no immediate response from Soviet officials, but Lithuanians said they were confident that President Mikhail Gorbachev would accept the compromise as sufficient to end the impasse and to resume delivery of oil and other products that were cut off 10 weeks ago.

"If the members of Parliament were not sure that was the case, they would not have approved the moratorium," said Rita Dapkus, a spokeswoman for Parliament.

The decision does not resolve the conflict over whose power is sovereign in Lithuania. But it relegates the dispute to a conference table and removes it for now as a source of embarrassment to Gorbachev.

Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene, defending the moratorium, said it would freeze the declaration of independence, made March 11, but would not affect any of the several laws enacted later that Moscow found particularly offensive.

These included measures freeing Lithuanian males from the Soviet military draft, putting limits on citizenship in the republic and laying claim to federal property.

"It is a political statement," she told Parliament, and will have no practical effect on the republic's ability to govern itself.

Earlier, Gorbachev rejected offers to do just the opposite - to suspend the laws enacted after independence while leaving the March 11 declaration itself intact.

Lithuanians said that Gorbachev, in meetings with their leaders, has always seemed more concerned with the broader principle of independence than with specific laws.

The independence moratorium sharply divided the Lithuanian Parliament and drew a small crowd of demonstrators, who denounced the move as a sellout.

by CNB