Latvia Avoids Clash With Kremlin

The Parliament of Soviet Latvia on Tuesday stepped back from a constitutional clash with the Kremlin and turned down proposals to give itself the right to veto Moscow’s decisions.

However, the 320 Latvian deputies did decide to pursue efforts to convince the Soviet leadership that proposed changes in the country’s federal constitution could violate the rights of individual republics, according to reporters in Riga, the Latvian capital.

“It was a compromise decision and not really the one the people expected,” said one senior journalist. He said many Latvians had wanted a clear-cut vote for a veto on the lines decided by the republic of Estonia last week. Several hundred thousand Latvians have signed petitions demanding that the legal changes be rejected.

The vote was the latest stage in a legal tussle between the central Soviet government and the restive Baltic republics, which see constitutional changes championed by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev as allowing tougher dictates from Moscow. The republics also contend that the changes encroach on their formal rights to sovereignty and secession from the Soviet Union.