Gorbachev Urges End to Ethnic Strife : Armenia, Azerbaijan Leaders Summoned to Scolding at Kremlin

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev summoned the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to an emergency meeting in the Kremlin on Thursday in an effort to bring the communal violence in the two southern Soviet republics to an end.

Gorbachev bluntly told the two groups that their prolonged feud, which has now grown into sustained civil unrest throughout the region, was jeopardizing his whole program of political, economic and social reforms, according to Radio Moscow.

He said the central authorities are prepared to take even more decisive action to end the strife, seeming to hint that Moscow might take over administration of the two republics--an unprecedented action that would underline the increasing seriousness of the crisis there.

Military Control

Much of Armenia and Azerbaijan were placed on “special status,” a step just short of declaring a state of emergency, and put under military control last week after violence again flared between ethnic groups.

Outwardly, relative calm has returned to Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to news reports. But Arkady I. Volsky, the special Kremlin emissary to the region, told the Supreme Soviet, the national Parliament, that both republics continue to “literally boil.”

With the reported death toll in the latest fighting now at 28, the region is seething with hatred and hostility, Volsky said, describing the situation as “openly threatening.”

He said armed clashes are still widespread despite the emergency measures; local Communist Party and government officials have not re-established control, and the refusal of Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders to compromise means further violence.

“When the law is being violated and blood is being spilled, the state cannot stand aside,” Volsky said.

Alexander F. Katusev, who is leading a special task force of police investigators and prosecutors gathered from across the nation, said efforts are being made to arrest those believed responsible for the violence and to bring them to trial quickly.

Under Soviet laws prohibiting ethnic or racial hostility, the national task force also will prosecute those making hate speeches or found putting up “provocative nationalist slogans,” said Katusev, the country’s deputy procurator-general.

“Such crimes are inevitably crimes against the state in a society based on fraternal friendship of various nationalities,” he said. Those convicted could be jailed for up to three years and sent into internal exile for five years more.

Volsky’s report appeared to lay the groundwork for a series of new government actions to restore order and then to deal with underlying issues, including the future of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. It was by far the frankest and most pessimistic official description of the Armenian-Azerbaijani crisis.

A special commission established by the Supreme Soviet was completing work on a series of proposals to ease the crisis and settle the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, he said, but there were still differences even among commission members.

No Move to Compromise

So far, however, there have been “no practical steps to meet each other halfway, and no one is even willing to do so,” Volsky said.

Many Armenian and Azerbaijani officials, far from trying to maintain order, had “supported the demagogues and increased tensions by their appeals to fight to the end, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, without thinking that the result would be the blood of the people,” Volsky said.

He added that traditional family-based clans wielded more power than either the government or the party, many of whose officials had openly curried favor with clan leaders by replacing political principles with widespread corruption.

Soviet authorities reported the arrest this week of members of the main group in Nagorno-Karabakh demanding the region’s transfer from Azerbaijan to Armenia. They stressed that the charges were not related to political activities but instead were charges of corruption, embezzlement and bribe-taking.

Soviet press reports from the two republics, both of which are closed to foreign correspondents, describe an imposed calm: less violence, smaller rallies, a slow return to work and a reopening of stores as troops sent last week to restore order have succeeded in suppressing the open combat.

Artificial, Fragile Calm

But the calm is both artificial and fragile, many say. “No one can talk about a lowering of tension in Baku,” the Soviet armed forces newspaper Red Star reported from the Azerbaijani capital. “Is there any guarantee that the situation will not worsen?”

On Tuesday night alone, the paper said, troops detained 550 people in Baku for violating emergency regulations, including a 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew, and confiscated a number of weapons.

According to other Soviet press reports, the anti-Armenian rallies that filled Baku’s Lenin Square with 400,000 people many nights last week have diminished to about 20,000, but they continue round the clock.

In Yerevan, the Armenian capital, the situation was quiet, according to Soviet press reports, as citizens returned to work and troops prevented further demonstrations in the city’s Opera Square.

“We appeal to all the republic’s residents to be prudent, to keep public order and not to permit isolated incidents to deteriorate into mass disturbances fraught with dangerous consequences,” Radio Yerevan urged.