Azerbaijanis Demand Soviets End Crackdown : Ethnic strife: Nationalists in Baku threaten to blow up an oil tanker. Gun battles continue.

Azerbaijani nationalists, boldly defying a ban on street gatherings, rallied by the thousands Sunday in the republic’s capital of Baku and massed at the port, threatening to blow up an oil tanker unless Soviet troops end their bloody crackdown on the predominantly Muslim city.

Mutinous Azerbaijani military cadets, meanwhile, waged sporadic gun battles with Red Army soldiers who early Saturday smashed through human barricades surrounding Baku, and activists reported additional deaths.

With citizens already rebelling against the Kremlin-imposed ban on public meetings on the second day of a state of emergency in Baku, it was unclear how Moscow would proceed next to try to re store calm to the southern republic, where open calls have been heard for secession from the Soviet Union.

The continuing violence in Azerbaijan, its ethnic-Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh and neighboring Armenia has created yet another serious challenge for Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who is under criticism from Armenians for reacting too slowly and from Azerbaijanis and Muslims in neighboring Iran for clamping down too harshly.

The army action in Baku is the bloodiest since Gorbachev took power in 1985. He has sought to avoid using force to end the numerous nationalist tensions that are tearing at the fabric of this multi-ethnic country.

“The Azerbaijani authorities did not give the Soviet army permission to enter our city, and we will never forgive the death of innocent victims. I call on all Azerbaijani soldiers and officers to resign from the army,” Azerbaijani President Elmira Kafarova was quoted by residents as saying in an address carried on Baku Radio.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Azerbaijanis, who are predominantly Shiite Muslims, streamed into Iran from the border towns of Lenkoran and Astarachai, and an Iranian leader warned that if the Soviet Union repressed the aspirations of Muslim Azerbaijanis, there would be “serious consequences.”

The Azerbaijanis were apparently fleeing the fighting, according to Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency.

IRNA also quoted Parliament speaker Mahdi Karrubi as saying: “Soviet officials should know that resorting to violence is not the solution to the problem of Azerbaijan. Violence and toughness toward people will entail more serious consequences.”

The Soviet army swept into Baku, a Caspian Sea oil port of 1.8 million people, before dawn on Saturday, bursting through human blockades with tanks and gunfire to end a three-day standoff between the troops and Azerbaijani nationalists who had barred the soldiers from entering.

The official toll is listed at 57 civilians dead and about 500 wounded, and six soldiers killed in the action. But Azerbaijanian activists have reported much higher figures.

Azerbaijan’s chief representative in Moscow, Sohrab Ibragimov, told a news conference Sunday that the death toll was about 500.

Three separate sources in Baku said in telephone interviews that Soviet troops have begun dumping some bodies at sea because the city morgues are filled.

Independent confirmation of this or of the number of fatalities has not been possible, and foreign journalists have not been permitted to enter Azerbaijan.

The deputy head of the Soviet General Staff, however, sharply denied that hundreds of civilians had died during the assault on Baku.

“I say categorically that those are lies,” Gen. Bronislav A. Omelichev told the government newspaper Izvestia. “The troops tried with all their power to avoid victims.”

But a Soviet television commentator, speaking on Sunday night’s main news program, said that those who claim the media are exaggerating events in Azerbaijan are wrong.

“Frankly speaking, we are not showing you all the horrible things taking place there,” the commentator said.

“The country is facing a great danger that cannot be compared to empty shops or the political events of the recent past,” he added. “Our people have not experienced anything like this since World War II.”

The army action in Baku came after Azerbaijanis there launched a wave of bloody attacks against Armenians, who are predominantly Christian. The two peoples have been fighting fiercely for two years over who should control Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Armenian-populated enclave within Azerbaijan, and about 200 people had died before the latest round of clashes erupted.

The Azerbaijani nationalists killed at least 72 Armenians in the course of a week, beating more and forcing thousands out of their homes. Some victims were burned alive and others were thrown from balconies. About 15,000 Armenians have been evacuated from Baku in the last eight days.

In Moscow on Sunday, Armenians gathered in a church to mourntheir dead and collect donations to help food and clothe the latest Armenian refugees.

At the same time, about 2,000 Armenians rallied in front of the central offices of the official Tass news agency, holding signs and shouting slogans blaming Gorbachev for the outbreak of violence in Azerbaijan and neighboring Armenia.

Armenians in the Soviet Union widely believe Gorbachev should have heeded warning signals and acted sooner in sending troops into Baku and preventing the deaths of Armenians.

In Baku, fighting persisted mainly in the area of the Salyansky Street military barracks, although nationalists occasionally took sniper shots at soldiers in other parts of the city, Azerbaijani journalist Nazin Ragimov said in a telephone interview from the city.

Nationalists also threw grenades and homemade gasoline bombs at military vehicles, Tass said. A correspondent for Moscow’s state-run TV and radio service was briefly held hostage.

Ragimov said that about 1,000 women wearing black, carrying black flags and pictures of some of the dead gathered in a mourning demonstration Sunday morning in Baku. When residents saw that Soviet troops did not interfere with the demonstration, others joined and by midday about 15,000 people were gathered near the Communist Party headquarters.

With many angrily shaking their fists, activists called for Soviet troops to leave the city and for the republic’s Communist Party to declare its independence from Moscow, following the example of the party in the Baltic republic of Lithuania, which took the same action last month.

In addition to banning street rallies, the emergency regulations also impose an 11 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew and empower security forces to detain suspects for long periods without charge. They ban strikes, the use of duplicating equipment and the use of transport without special permission.

But the ban on public gatherings was also defied Sunday at the Baku wharf, where “a group of extremists got together a crowd of people near a tanker moored there,” Tass reported. “They threatened to blow up the ship if troops are not withdrawn from Baku.”

Without elaborating, Tass said: “As a result of measures taken, the crowd was dispersed.”

Ragimov said that workers aboard other ships anchored in Baku’s port have threatened to set fire to their vessels unless troops are withdrawn.

The Unrest Continues Baku: Azerbaijanis rally to protest Soviet crackdown. Meantime, mutinous Azerbaijani military cadets wage sporadic gun battles with Soviet troops. Lenkoran: Hundreds of Azerbaijanis flee across the border into Iran. Nakhlchevan: More ethnic fighting reported. YETSIN OBJECTS: Sending troops was a mistake, says politician Boris Yeltsin. A9

HOLLYWOOD RALLY: Local Armenians vowed to defend their homeland. B1