Soviet General Says Azerbaijanis Planned a Coup

The Red Army went into Baku to stop the Azerbaijani People’s Front and other groups from seizing power, Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov said in remarks published Friday.

Gen. Yazov told Soviet journalists in Baku, capital of the Azerbaijan republic, that on Jan. 20--the day after soldiers took over the city--”a meeting was planned at which it was proposed to declare the transfer of power into the hands of the People’s Front.”

Opposition members of the Soviet parliament and an official newspaper questioned the Kremlin’s use of force in the Caucasus to quell the ethnic violence that began Jan. 13.

Yazov said the People’s Front declared its own state of emergency in Baku a full day before the soldiers moved in, and “in many regions of the city . . . Soviet and party organs had ceased to control the situation.”

In the remarks published by the government newspaper Izvestia, Yazov appeared to stress the need to control the political situation over stopping ethnic warfare in which dozens of people were killed.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other top officials have cited public safety as the reason for the military assault and ensuing battle with nationalists in which at least 80 people died.

The defense minister said the military’s task now was to destroy the power structure the People’s Front and other informal political organizations had established in state-run institutions.

Critics of the military move against well-armed Azerbaijani nationalists have said attacks on the Armenian minority had ended well before the army moved. Azerbaijani nationalists have accused Moscow of seeking to crush their movement against the Communist Party and government apparatus.

Yazov said 80 “extremists” from the People’s Front and other informal organizations had been arrested.

Baku journalist Tuuzala Kasumova said by telephone that, after meeting with Azerbaijani deputies, Yazov had pulled some tanks and other military equipment off the streets of Baku and the city was less tense.

Yazov said: “The army’s actions are directed at breathing new life into Baku’s fading economy, confiscating weapons from the population and destroying the organizational structure of the People’s Front leaders who are keen on seizing power.

“According to our estimates, about 40,000 militants armed with submachine guns, rifles of various systems, machine guns and shotguns are loose in Azerbaijan.”

Yuri N. Afanasyev, a member of the Congress of People’s Deputies, was one of the opposition figures who requested an emergency parliament session to settle the Caucasus dispute.

“From our point of view, we should have a Supreme Soviet session to hear all groups, to regulate the conflict,” he said at a Moscow news conference.

“We need to call a session so that the threat of the south does not touch all of society,” he said.

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet has the power to call the Supreme Soviet into session. A regular session of the Supreme Soviet is scheduled for mid-February.

Although Gorbachev’s reforms have opened up Soviet society, Afanasyev likened the decision to send soldiers into Baku to the secret decisions to crush democracy movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and send troops to Afghanistan.

He and 12 other legislators signed a document urging a special session of the Supreme Soviet to discuss redrawing the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have been locked in a territorial dispute for two years, and setting a deadline for withdrawning the soldiers in Baku. They said they were “categorically against the use of force.”

Afanasyev is a leader of the Inter-regional Deputies Group, the formal parliamentary opposition that claims about 400 members and was created largely through the inspiration of Andrei Sakharov, the late human rights activist.

Meanwhile, Baltic activists said Friday that Azerbaijani representatives had agreed to visit Riga, capital of Latvia, this week for possible talks with an Armenian delegation on resolving ethnic strife that caused the military intervention.

The newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said two veterans of the Afghanistan war, Cols. A. Savelyev and A. Rusakov, sent a telegram to Gorbachev Jan. 19 that said bringing in troops would lead “to a total break in relations and put their families in danger,” as well as “creating a rise in the anti-Russian mood.”

Since then, thousands of relatives of Soviet soldiers have been evacuated from Baku and there have been reports of threats and attacks against Russians in the Azerbaijani capital.

Bringing Russian families into the conflict could spread unrest far across the Soviet Union. Despite having their own republics, Armenians and Azerbaijanis live together with Russians in many parts of the country.

Military commandant Lt. Gen. Vladimir Dubinyak said Baku was “relatively calm,” early Friday, Tass reported. In the previous 24 hours, 147 people had been detained in Baku either for breaking curfew or other violations, Tass said.

Two newspapers were banned by the military authorities.

The agency said troops had not used weapons Thursday, but Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that two people were killed when an armored personnel carrier ran over a car.

In Moscow, Azerbaijani activists said commandos in bullet-proof vests and helmets raided the republic’s mission and arrested a nationalist leader. A Moscow police official confirmed the raid and said it was being investigated.

Azerbaijan journalist Shain Hadjiev said commandos charged into the government mission at 3 a.m., searched it and herded about 40 men into buses.

But he said all were released except Ekhtibar Mamedov, who has gained attention recently by pushing Azerbaijani claims that there were far more people killed in the troop assault on Baku than the official death toll listed.