Kremlin Offers Concession on Powers of Baltic States

In a major concession to the restive Baltic states, Soviet lawmakers today recommend modifying the constitutional amendments proposed by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to remove some checks on the republics’ powers.

A commission of the Supreme Soviet recommended changes in constitutional amendments that have touched off a furor in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia because of limits they place on the republics’ powers, the daily newspaper Pravda said.

The constitutional amendments were proposed by Gorbachev as the keystone of his political reform program, which includes the creation of a more powerful presidency and a full-time national legislature.

As originally written, the amendment to Article 108 authorizes a newly created Council of People’s Deputies to “take decisions relative to the composition of the U.S.S.R., the approval of the formation of new autonomous republics and autonomous regions in the composition of the union republics.”

The commission recommended that article be changed to limit the council to questions “of national-state structure relative to the jurisdiction of the U.S.S.R.”

Article 108 also authorizes the council to annul legislation and acts of the Soviet republics if they contradict the Constitution. The commission, which met Saturday, recommended that such language be stricken as part of an effort to increase “the development of the sovereign rights of the republics,” Pravda said.

Local Laws Get Primacy

However, the lawmakers also condemned the action of the Estonian Supreme Soviet, saying its decision on Wednesday to give local laws primacy over Soviet legislation was at odds with the 1977 Soviet Constitution.

Their ruling was transmitted to the Supreme Soviet Presidium, the nation’s highest executive body, possibly presaging a striking down of the Estonian decision by the Kremlin leadership.

In Lithuania, thousands of people chanting “for shame!” jammed the center of their capital, Vilnius, today to protest their legislature’s refusal to declare the Soviet republic’s autonomy from Moscow, residents said.

The Lithuanian Movement for Perestroika’s call for a 10-minute noon protest halted traffic in the city center. Alvydas Medalinskas, the movement’s acting secretary, addressed the crowd from a balcony and called for the removal of three members of Lithuania’s Communist Party Central Committee.