Lithuania Move to Secede Called ‘Illegal, Invalid’

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Tuesday that Lithuania’s landmark declaration of independence is “illegal and invalid” and ruled out negotiations with the Baltic republic over its claim of sovereignty.

“Lithuanians, along with representatives of Latvia and Estonia, have asked to hold talks. There can be no question of negotiations. You carry out negotiations with a foreign country,” Gorbachev said, hitting the table for emphasis and drawing applause from the assembled deputies at a special session of the Soviet Parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies.

But Lithuanians who attended Tuesday’s session in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses said they are not troubled by Gorbachev’s stated refusal to negotiate, which they consider primarily a stalling tactic. They said they believe Gorbachev will eventually sit across a bargaining table from them.

“Gorbachev is a realist. He’ll change his stand,” said Algimantas Cekuolis, one of the Lithuanian deputies.

“Just remember how it was about the unification of Germany and how swiftly he changed his position,” Cekuolis said, referring to Gorbachev’s initial adamant opposition to reunification and his later support of it.

Gorbachev told the deputies that he had taken an initial look at the declaration of independence and “from what I have read, it is illegal and invalid.”

But he went on to stress that the Kremlin’s response will not be finalized until a specially appointed commission, headed by Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, completes its study of the issue.

“In the first step, we have to give a political and judicial evaluation to what happened,” he said. “Our position will be made public as soon as possible.”

Gorbachev and even conservative Soviet leaders have restricted the Soviet government’s options in at least one respect: They have repeatedly promised that there will be no use of military force to keep Lithuania from breaking away.

The president said the Supreme Soviet will begin considering the issue as soon as the Congress finishes its special session, probably today. He noted that he considers nothing to be changed in Moscow’s relations with the Baltic republic and added that nothing will be altered “until the entire situation is cleared up.”

He then drew some chuckles when he referred to the Lithuanians as “comrades” and added with a smile: “I think they are comrades.”

Lithuania, along with its sister Baltic republics of Latvia and Estonia, was forcibly annexed into the Soviet Union in 1940 as part of a secret agreement between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

On Sunday, the republic’s Supreme Soviet (legislature) reasserted Lithuania’s independence, elected the first non-Communist leader ever named in any Soviet republic and stated that the Soviet constitution is no longer valid in its territory.

But activists have acknowledged that the republic faces a number of sticky issues on the road to independence, most notably how to achieve economic self-sufficiency.

In the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius on Tuesday, the Supreme Soviet passed a resolution stating that the republic was assuming jurisdiction over all factories, ports, and power and communication lines.

The legislature said the republic will continue to honor all contracts with the Soviet Union and the factories will, as usual, remit their profits to Moscow. But the resolution was intended to prevent Moscow from removing the assets from factories, such as raw materials and equipment.

Republic leaders also are struggling to work out a number of practical issues, including how to begin overseeing the activities of the KGB secret police and what to do about about 50,000 Lithuanians currently serving in the Soviet army.

In a meeting last week with Lithuania’s Communist Party leader, Algirdas Brazauskas, Gorbachev said that if the republic tried to secede from the Soviet Union, it would have to repay the nation for its investment in factories and infrastructure over the last 50 years. He estimated that the bill would come to 21 billion rubles, or about $34 billion.

Cekuolis said Lithuanian activists responded positively to the fact that Gorbachev gave Brazauskas a figure.

“It means business, at least some start of negotiations,” he said.

Lithuanians have said they are preparing their own bill for Moscow that will take into account compensation to the republic for decades of fiscal mismanagement as well as the approximately 300,000 people killed, imprisoned or sent to Siberia as forced labor by Soviet rulers.

Cekuolis said initial figuring indicated that the republic will demand about 300 billion rubles, a figure he said was arrived at by calculating what the republic’s gross national product would be now if it had continued to grow at the same pace that it enjoyed before it was annexed into the Soviet Union.

Not everyone in Lithuania has agreed with the speed with which the republic’s Supreme Soviet declared independence. Brazauskas, for instance, told reporters Monday he thought the republic had moved too quickly.

In the Congress, Gorbachev read aloud a number of telegrams condemning the Lithuanian move, including several from citizens of the republic itself.

But he extended a welcoming hand to Lithuanian delegates, most of whom did not attend Monday’s session in Moscow, choosing instead to stay in Vilnius and participate in the historic parliamentary session still under way there.

“We welcome the fact that deputies from all the republics, including Lithuania, are in attendence,” Gorbachev said.

But Cekuolis and another Lithuanian deputy, Vaidotas Anataitis, both stressed that the deputies attended the session only because Gorbachev personally had requested it and only as “guests and observers.”