Delegation May Visit Lithuania 3 Days After Vote, Soviets Say

The Soviet Union offered Friday to admit Rep. C. Christopher Cox and three colleagues to Lithuania--three days after the election that the congressmen were sent to observe.

“I’ve had more bureaucratic double talk today from the Soviet Union than I can stand,” Cox (R-Newport Beach) said Friday in a telephone interview. The congressional delegation has been waiting in West Berlin since Wednesday for Soviet permission to travel to Lithuania to monitor today’s legislative elections.

The Soviet offer came Friday during a meeting here between Yuri Dubinin, the U.S.S.R.’s ambassador to the United States, and senior State Department officials, Cox said. Earlier in the day, 11 U.S. senators sent an indignant letter to Dubinin demanding that the Soviet Union grant entry visas to the delegation.

The resolution of the dispute remained in doubt Friday evening. The State Department told Dubinin that it found the suggestion of a Tuesday visit unacceptable, and asked the ambassador to return with a better offer, Cox said.

Despite the delay, the delegation is still likely to make the trip, Cox said, because about half of the 140 legislative contests probably will require runoff elections.

“There are strong reasons for us to want to still go,” Cox said, “because we will arrive in the heart of the last-minute campaigning for the seats that will determine the control” of the Lithuanian legislature.

Cox described a lengthy meeting Friday between the delegation and officials at the Soviet Embassy in East Berlin as “exceptional.” Soviet officials in East Berlin initially promised to produce visas that would enable the four congressmen to leave for Lithuania today. But hours later, Dubinin, in effect, withdrew that offer, Cox said.

In their letter to Dubinin, the senators wrote:

”. . . If the world is to believe that the (Lithuanian) elections were freely held, and that the Soviet Union is serious about its political reforms, outside observers must be allowed free entry and travel throughout Lithuania. . . .

“Furthermore, we are concerned that the denial of visas to these U.S. congressmen will set an unwelcome precedent for future Soviet decisions on upcoming Congressional visits.”

The letter was signed by California’s junior senator, Pete Wilson, Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.), Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) and eight others.

Cox and Reps. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), William Sarpalius (D-Tex.) and John Miller (R-Wash.) were appointed to the election-monitoring group last week by House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) The congressmen left Washington for West Berlin on Tuesday, a day after the Soviet officials in Moscow informed the U.S. Embassy there that the congressional request for visas to visit Lithuania had been denied.

Annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, Lithuania has been the scene of a growing separatist movement.

Times staff writer Luz Villarreal in Orange County contributed to this story.