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

DATE: FRIDAY, May 18, 1990                   TAG: 9005180824
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

BALTIC CRISIS EASES

President Mikhail Gorbachev said today the Kremlin is prepared to examine any possibility to resolve the dispute over Lithuania's independence, provided the Soviet constitutional process is observed.

The prime minister of the Baltic republic, Kazimiera Prunskiene, met with Gorbachev on Thursday and later said significant progress was made toward settling the dispute but their main difference remained unresolved.

Prunskiene met this afternoon with Secretary of State James Baker III, who has said the Baltic impasse was casting a shadow over the summit to be held later this month in Washington between Gorbachev and President Bush.

Baker arrived at Spaso House, the home of U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock, an hour and 45 minutes late, indicating that his earlier meeting with Gorbachev had gone into overtime.

Gorbachev, speaking to reporters before meeting with Baker this morning, said, "through the constitutional process, we are ready to consider any possibility, any question."

The meeting late Thursday followed a Lithuanian offer to suspend laws made following its declaration of independence March 11 if negotiations could begin with the Kremlin to resolve the standoff.

Gorbachev had not met with Lithuanian representatives in the more than two months since the republic declared independence. Instead, he applied economic pressure that includes a virtual blockade of fuel, other raw materials and manufactured goods.

The official Soviet news agency Tass said the Lithuanian proposal for a compromise was a sign that "certain steps had been made toward the normalization of the situation."

But it added: "Prunskiene's attention was drawn to the indispensible necessity that the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet cancel - or at a minimum, suspend - this act (the independence declaration) and all the legislative measures following it that contradict the Soviet Constitution."

Prunskiene, speaking with reporters at the Lithuanian mission in Moscow, said the republic's parliament will on Saturday consider formalizing the offer to suspend implementation of the declaration of independence.

"This does not mean we are returning to the situation of March 10," she told reporters, underlining the Lithuanian determination not to back away from the declaration of independence.

Longinas Vasiliauskas, press attache of the Lithuanian mission in Moscow, said Prunskiene called the meeting "an introduction to coming negotiations."

by CNB