Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990 TAG: 9003280403
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
Lithuanian leaders marshaled their meager police force to protect government and communications centers in the capital of Vilnius after Soviet troops seized young Lithuanian army deserters and secured the republic's Communist headquarters early Tuesday.
The Lithuanian president, Vytautas Landsbergis, pleaded openly for international support, saying time was running out for bolstering the fledgling government with official recognition.
He was bitter at times toward the Bush administration, charging it had "sold us out" for larger interests.
"Are they willing once again to sell Lithuania to the Soviet Union?" he asked, invoking Lithuania's forced annexation by the Soviet Union in 1940.
After days of steadily tougher talk on Lithuania, the White House softened its tone Tuesday and made it clear the U.S. was not prepared to take the Baltic republic's side in its test of wills with Moscow.
Western European leaders, concerned about wider repercussions of the crisis, also neither encouraged nor rejected Lithuania's claim to independence.
They avoided any direct criticism of the Soviet army's reportedly violent roundup of deserters.
Bush administration officials said privately they were unhappy about the roundup. But in public, spokesmen for the White House and the State Department refused to criticize the move or even to comment specifically on it.
"I choose not to do it today," White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, referring to his earlier harsh remarks. "We are worried that our comments might be portrayed in such a way as they would be unhelpful."
The Kremlin condemned a U.S. Senate resolution of last Thursday supporting the breakaway republic, saying it could become "a kind of detonator in the complex and explosive situation that has arisen in this republic."
Gennadi Gerasimov, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, told a news conference that the creeping extension of Soviet military control in Lithuania and the expulsion of foreigners did not mean the Kremlin was planning to crush the rebellious republic by force.
Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov, interviewed on the evening television news program "Vremya" on a visit to Paris, said: "So far, the Soviet army has not been used. And I think that everything will be resolved by peaceful methods."
Irascible and ill-at-ease under a siege of skeptical questioning, Gerasimov defended the use of troops to seize army deserters and take control of buildings claimed by a wing of the Lithuanian Communist Party loyal to Moscow. He said he could not explain why military helicopters were used on Monday to drop leaflets promoting a street rally against the independent government.
"I don't know," he snapped. "I'm not there."
"These episodes of today, or yesterday or tomorrow are of secondary nature," he added. "The main thing is that by its declaration of independence, which was adopted two weeks ago, the Lithuanian Parliament acted against the Constitution. The president must save the Constitution."
In Vilnius, the Landsbergis government set out a thin siege defense at its Parliament headquarters. It called in 200 patrolmen armed only with nightsticks and unraveled firehoses for a feared daylight assault that never occurred.
The Lithuanian leadership was further unsettled when several thousand pro-Moscow opponents of the republic's declaration of independence mounted a protest on the square adjoining the Parliament building.
Bright red Soviet flags were unfurled, and the crowd shouted that the Landsbergis government was "dictatorial" toward the republic's non-Lithuanian minority, mainly Russians and Poles. About 9 percent of the republic's residents are Russians and 7 percent are Poles; 80 percent are Lithuanians.
Gen. Valentin I. Varennikov, chief of Soviet ground forces, said that the recent military moves were necessary to protect Soviet property in the face of assertions by Lithuanian officials that Soviet law would no longer be obeyed.
by CNB