Moscow Warns Lithuania Not to Take Steps

The Soviet government today issued a harsh warning that it will not allow Lithuania to put up its own customs posts, introduce its own currency or take over Moscow-run factories without permission.

The warning represented the first concrete steps taken by the government to counter Lithuania’s March 13 declaration of independence, which President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has called invalid. However, the warning did not specify what measures the Kremlin would take to protect its interests.

The government announcement, read on Soviet TV, accused Lithuanian leaders of planning to turn over national factories to private owners, bring in a separate currency and put up customs posts on the Soviet border.

The government was especially concerned about nuclear power plants in the Baltic republic, it said.

The announcement came as a delegation of Lithuanian legislators arrived in Moscow seeking talks with Gorbachev on their declaration of independence.

In the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, President Vytautus Landsbergis said Soviet military maneuvers in Lithuania are increasing tensions in the region.

On Sunday, Soviet military jets buzzed Vilnius in what many Lithuanians considered an intimidation tactic, and Soviet troops held maneuvers in the countryside.

“The military exercises of Soviet troops in Lithuania now under way are intensifying tensions,” Landsbergis told Lithuania’s legislature, according to Lithuanian television editor Eduardas Potashinkis, who monitored the meeting.

The Lithuanian leader said he was told in a meeting with high-ranking Soviet officers on Sunday that the maneuvers had been planned long in advance.

The six-member delegation that arrived in Moscow was headed by Egidius Bickauskas, a lawyer who recently resigned from the Lithuanian Communist Party.