Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 12, 1990 TAG: 9003122817
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VILNIUS, U.S.S.R. LENGTH: Long
Legislators joined hands, raised them over their heads and chanted "Lietuva, Lietuva," or "Lithuania," after they voted to proclaim their homeland independent once more. The vote was 124-0 with six deputies abstaining.
The move was not immediately recognized or sanctioned by Moscow, and legislators acknowledged that full independence would only be won after long, difficult negotiations with the Kremlin.
The lawmakers also declared that the KGB and police now must take their orders from Vilnius, not Moscow.
Outside the parliament hall, a small crowd broke into wild cheers over the declaration of independence. Earlier, the crowd ripped down a metal Soviet crest from the outside door of the legislative building and carted it away. Some stamped on it.
"That's the end of the Soviet regime," said a jubilant deputy looking on.
"Expressing the will of the people, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania decrees and solemnly declares the restoration of the exercise of the sovereign powers of the Lithuanian state, which were annulled by foreign force in 1940," said the legislative decree.
"And from this moment, Lithuania again becomes a sovereign state," it said.
For Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the vote represented perhaps his biggest crisis yet on his fifth anniversary as Soviet leader and the eve of a national parliamentary session.
The outgoing president of the Lithuanian parliament, Communist Party chief Algirdas Brazauskas, said before the vote that approval of secession could have a "contagious effect" on other republics.
That would only add to Gorbachev's troubles, which already include rumblings for independence elsewhere, and serious economic problems and ethnic strife in many areas of the nation.
Leaders of the pro-independence Sajudis political movement that dominates the new Lithuanian legislature acknowledged that full independence would have to be won in long, difficult negotiations.
"We have to sit down at the table," said the republic's new president, Vytautas Landsbergis. "We're not going to be beating our fists, but we have to start settling accounts."
Earlier Sunday, Landsbergis, the chairman of Sajudis, was the first non-communist to be elected president of a Soviet republic. The bearded 57-year-old music professor easily defeated Brazauskas.
At a news conference after the close of Sunday's session, Landsbergis said talks with Moscow will start "when the Soviet government adopts an appropriate decision on that issue."
Lithuanians rushed to hold their session this weekend to establish their claim to independence before the national parliamentary session, which is expected to expand Gorbachev's powers to include declaring a state of emergency in a republic and suspending its parliament.
However, Landsbergis told reporters: "Perhaps the election of Mikhail S. Gorbachev to the post of president of the Soviet Union would make this problem easier and bring the date of the talks nearer."
Gorbachev has told Lithuania that it will cost the republic $34 billion to pay for the factories and other infrastructure built during a half-century of Soviet rule. Lithuanians say their bill for decades of Soviet repression will be even higher.
But Gorbachev and other Soviet officials have indicated the Kremlin may grudgingly accept Lithuanian secession.
Tass, the official news agency, said the session "temporarily" recognized independent Lithuania's 1938 constitution as the supreme law of the land instead of the Soviet Constitution.
In Washington, White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said the United States will urge the Soviet government to "respect the will of the citizens of Lithuania."
"The United States has never recognized the forcible incorporation of the independent states of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania into the U.S.S.R. We have consistently supported the Baltic peoples' inalienable right to peaceful self-determination," Fitzwater said.
The Lithuania Supreme Soviet also changed the republic's name from the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Republic of Lithuania and dropped its Soviet emblem.
The deputies stood, applauded and then broke into cheers as a plain beige drape descended to cover a gold banner behind Landsbergis depicting a Lithuanian crest that included a Soviet hammer, sickle and star.
They stood again as a former political prisoner in a traditional embroidered shirt presented the new crest, a white knight on a dark shield.
Deputy Rolandas Paulauskas, a Sajudis editor from Kaunas, said the declaration of independence would not change anything immediately, but "as a political act it gives a push to negotiations."
He noted that Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov reportedly had told Lithuanians he would not be willing to talk about concessions concerning withdrawal of the Soviet Army until after such a political gesture.
Justus Paleckis, ideology secretary of Lithuanian Communist Party, said Lithuania was assured of getting independence but "real independence will only be achieved in some years."
Sajudis-backed candidates had won a two-thirds majority in the first contested elections to the Baltic republic's 141-seat legislature. Several of the seats were not filled, but pro-independence activists decided not to wait for a full slate of deputies to be present before they called the legislature into session.
Sajudis leaders decided it would be unfitting to re-elect Brazauskas now that his Communists were in the minority, said Sajudis activist Haroldas Subachius.
Landsbergis received 91 votes for the presidency, with 42 against. Brazauskas got 38 votes, with 95 against.
Brazauskas led Lithuanian Communists into splitting off from the Soviet party in December and joining the drive for restoration of the independence that the Ireland-sized state enjoyed between the world wars.
Lithuania, like the other independence-minded Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, was forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 while under Red Army occupation.
by CNB