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

DATE: SATURDAY, March 31, 1990                   TAG: 9003310056
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

ESTONIA PLANS BREAK FROM SOVIETS

The Kremlin's woes in the Baltic suddenly doubled Friday when Estonian lawmakers decreed that Soviet law no longer applied in their republic and announced a step-by-step return to the independence snuffed out by the Red Army 50 years ago.

"The restoration of the Republic of Estonia has begun," the Parliament of the Switzerland-sized republic proclaimed, its resolution immediately confronting President Mikhail Gorbachev with another fissure in the new "Soviet federation" he is trying to build.

Central authorities were certain to oppose Estonia's action. But the Estonian legislators, saying that they had learned a lesson from the Kremlin's ire at the Lithuanians, took care to avert an open break by saying that independence was their final goal, rather than declaring it outright.

Nonetheless, 29 ethnic Russian members of the Parliament meeting in Tallinn, Estonia's capital, protested by boycotting the vote, said Yuri Myerushte, an editor at the state-run Estonian Telegraph Agency. One deputy said that the proclamation could lead to bloodshed.

"This constitutes a state coup d'etat," Vladimir Lebedev warned his fellow lawmakers during debate. "Think hard before voting whether by pushing the green button you are voting for civil war."

"The Supreme Soviet [Parliament] does not recognize the legality of the state authority of the U.S.S.R. on the territory of Estonia," declared the resolution, which was approved by 73 members of the 105-seat legislature, with three others abstaining.

It announced the "beginning of a period of transition which will culminate in the formation of the constitutional organs of state power of the Republic of Estonia," the smallest and least populated of the three Baltic states that were independent between the world wars.

Lebedev and other leaders of the Russian-dominated Equal Rights Group bitterly attacked the independence resolution and warned that they would appeal to the national Parliament.

Opponents of independence demanded the issue be decided by a referendum and not by Parliament, which the Soviets say also must be the case in Lithuania.

But such thinking was rejected by the pro-independence majority that Estonian voters chose in this month's parliamentary elections, the freest in the half-century of Soviet rule.

The northernmost of the Baltic states, Estonia was coerced into the Kremlin's orbit in June 1940, when it agreed under threat to allow Red Army forces to march in.

by CNB