Islamic Flags, Khomeini Pictures Displayed in Baku

Islamic flags and portraits of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were displayed in the streets of the Azerbaijani capital of Baku, and 867 people were arrested as ethnic tensions continued, the official media said Monday.

In Yerevan, the capital of the neighboring republic of Armenia, unofficial sources said Moscow dissident Sergei I. Grigoryants and another leading Armenian activist were arrested.

No new outbreaks of violence were reported in the troubled republics, where ethnic violence last week killed at least seven people. A strict curfew remained in effect in Baku, Yerevan, and other cities.

The government newspaper Izvestia printed an interview with 26-year-old Nemat Panakhov, said to have led rallies by thousands of protesters on Baku’s Lenin Square.

Izvestia correspondents asked him to explain why “we saw green flags and portraits of Khomeini on the square.”

Azerbaijanis are predominantly Muslim, and Armenians are predominantly Christian. Both republics border on Iran, and the Soviet Union is concerned about the possibility of Khomeini’s fundamentalist Muslim revolution in Iran spreading across the frontier to Soviet Central Asia.

Izvestia quoted Panakhov as saying that leaders of the protests rejected such appeals to Muslim fundamentalism.

An Armenian family that fled to Moscow said rampaging Azerbaijanis last week ransacked homes and raped at least two women in the Azerbaijani city of Kirovabad.