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

DATE: TUESDAY, April 3, 1990                   TAG: 9004030483
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

LITHUANIA SOFTENS INDEPENDENCE PUSH

After three weeks of tension, discord and daily pressure from Moscow, the leadership of Lithuania softened its tone on Monday, insisting that it never expected immediate independence despite declaring itself free of Soviet rule on March 11.

"It may seem to some people that this amounted to a demand that power be handed over the very next day," the Lithuanian president, Vytautas Landsbergis, said Monday night. "We did not expect this, and we did not count on this."

Landsbergis spoke in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, and his comments were reported on Moscow television. In his remarks, he again stressed his call for negotiations, which has so far been rejected by the Kremlin.

Nonetheless, the Lithuanian leader's comments showed a marked easing of the republic's plaintive language toward Moscow, and there was as yet no comparable softening by the Kremlin toward the breakaway Baltic republic.

As a result of the pressure from Moscow to rescind its independence declaration, the Lithuanian parliamentary leadership seems to have switched to a more ingratiating tone. In a statement, the Lithuanian leaders showered President Mikhail Gorbachev with praise Monday as it formulated the gentlest possible rebuff of his demand that the republic annul its declaration of independence before the Kremlin considers holding talks.

But offering a message intended to keep alive their hope for talks, the leaders of the Lithuanian Parliament praised Gorbachev's "strong leadership" in encouraging political freedom and cited Lithuanians' "admiration" for his commitment to law.

Eventually, the statement from the Parliament's Presidium took care to "respectfully remind" the Soviet leader that Lithuania stood by its March 11 renunciation of Soviet authority.

The information office of the new Lithuanian government said that by late Monday night, the presses had not started for the nonparty newspapers that the new government had counted on as an outlet to the public. But printers favoring the independence government were reportedly refusing to print the pro-Moscow newspapers.

by CNB