Security Tightened as Refugees Flee Strife in 2 Soviet Regions

Kremlin officials beefed up security at airports and power plants in the republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia on Saturday and scrambled to aid an estimated 150,000 refugees who have fled their homes in fear of ethnic violence, Soviet media reported.

The Moscow leadership also ripped into the Communist Party and government leaders of the rival republics for failing to halt the wave of communal rioting that has killed at least 28 people.

Soviet leaders ordered local officials in the republics to work together on a special commission to ease the tension, and they assigned several members of the ruling Politburo to assist them.

“Instead of fighting those who instigate disorders, spread all kinds of rumors and stir up national hatred, there is only dispute about who is more guilty,” the official Tass news agency said, in reporting on an emergency meeting called Thursday by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev with leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. “The two republics cannot agree on even one action together,” Tass said.

Soviet soldiers moved into the two southern republics two weeks ago in attempt to stop the violence, but tensions have not abated.

Armenians have been demanding that Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely Armenian section of Azerbaijan, be turned over to the Armenian republic.

The Tass report, carried on the national evening news Saturday, flatly rejected any possibility of altering borders while the situation is volatile.

Meanwhile, the Council of Ministers ordered a 24-hour guard on “power plants, oil and gas fields, pipelines, power lines and facilities for rail and air transport, communications and water supplies” in both republics, Tass reported. Baku is the center of the Caspian Sea oil fields.

Official radio also tried to squelch rumors that large numbers of Azerbaijanis have been slain or injured in the ethnic disputes with Armenians. Baku medical authorities have treated just 17 people in the past few days, a radio report said, although it acknowledged that 78,000 Azerbaijanis have returned to their native republic from Armenia.

The Azerbaijani Council of Ministers confirmed the figure of 78,000 refugees in Azerbaijan. The Armenpress news agency in Armenia said 70,000 Armenians had fled in the opposite direction.

Azerbaijanis and Armenians must work out a joint solution in which “there should be no winners or losers,” Tass said. It also warned that “tomorrow might be even more tragic” if nothing is done.