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

DATE: SUNDAY, June 17, 1990                   TAG: 9006170087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

BALTIC REPUBLIC RETREATS

The Lithuanian government, retreating on its three-month-old declaration of independence, recommended Saturday that the Baltic republic's Parliament suspend the declaration in order to begin negotiations with the Soviet central government on Lithuania's secession.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has demanded the unilateral declaration be suspended before negotiations begin.

The declaration of independence adopted March 11 would remain valid, government officials said, but its implementation would be suspended while negotiations were under way. Lithuania remains determined to become independent, they said, but wants to negotiate its future relationship with Moscow.

The proposal must be approved by the Parliament, many of whose members are outspoken advocates of immediate and full independence, and then accepted by the central government.

Until now, Lithuania said that it would only freeze the implementation of the hundred-plus laws and resolutions adopted after the independence declaration, but it refused to suspend or rescind the declaration itself.

Such action, Lithuanian leaders argued, would amount to accepting voluntarily Lithuania's status as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. The small nation, which was independent for 18 years between World War I and World War II, was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 in a pact made by the Kremlin with Nazi Germany.

The shift in the republic's stand was significant enough for the official Soviet news agency Tass to say Saturday that it "could mark the beginning of the solution of all the `Lithuanian problem.' "

Gorbachev has said Lithuania has the right of self-determination and a constitutional right to secede from the Soviet Union, but had insisted the terms for its withdrawal must be negotiated within the framework of the Soviet constitution and legislation.

In talks last week with the presidents of the three Baltic republics, including Lithuania's Vytautas Landsbergis, he significantly relaxed those conditions, clearing the way for a compromise.

"If Lithuania will suspend the implementation of this act of independence, we may start to talk," Gorbachev said Tuesday. "That means suspending its implementation at least for the duration of the talks."

by CNB