Kremlin Tries to Block Lithuania : Secession: Soviet premier moves to stop rebellious republic from disengaging its economy from nation’s.

The Soviet government, acting under orders from President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, moved Monday to assert its authority in Lithuania and prevent the small Baltic republic from implementing plans to secede from the Soviet Union.

Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov instructed central government ministries, including the KGB, the Soviet security agency, to act immediately to stop Lithuania from carrying out a program that would disengage the republic’s economy from that of the Soviet Union as a whole.

Ryzhkov, in his order broadcast Monday evening on radio and television, told his ministers to assume direct management immediately of all centrally owned or operated enterprises in Lithuania and not to enter into any negotiations with Lithuanian authorities about their takeover.

He ordered the Interior Ministry and the KGB to prevent Lithuania from establishing its own customs system and thus controlling trade between it and the rest of the Soviet Union. Other steps will be taken to prevent the republic from creating its own banking system and issuing its own currency.

The order also calls for “radically increased” security around a nuclear power station and “other vital installations that are federal property,” and this seemed likely to bring the deployment of large numbers of police and troops around Lithuania to guard key facilities.

With tensions continuing to escalate between Lithuania and Moscow, the central government’s moves were its first to counter Lithuania’s declaration of independence last week, and the official news agency Tass implied that further measures would be taken if necessary to halt the planned secession.

But Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis replied in Vilnius, the republic’s capital, that for all the harshness of Moscow’s statements, which condemned Lithuania for “crude violations of constitutional norms” and damage to the Soviet Union’s interests, the move was probably “an introductory stage of negotiations.”

The differences between Lithuania and the Soviet government, Landsbergis said, should and could be resolved through negotiations. In any event, he added, Lithuania wants to maintain its economic ties with the rest of the Soviet Union but put them on a fairer footing.

Lithuania’s Parliament voted overwhelmingly March 13 to re-establish the independence it had from 1918, following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, until it was forcibly incorporated by the Soviet Union in 1940, along with its neighbors, Estonia and Latvia.

Gorbachev, while strongly opposed to Lithuania’s secession, has called for a “respectful dialogue” between Moscow and the republic with the hope that through this means, the Soviet Union can be transformed into a truly federal state. But failure to do so quickly will probably bring the secession of not only Lithuania but other restive republics.

The Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, decided Monday to put on its immediate agenda a bill that sets out the methods and requirements for secession by a constituent Soviet republic--there are 15, including the Russian Federation, the largest.

As drafted, the bill would require popular approval in a referendum, extensive negotiations between the republic, the central government and neighboring republics, and finally, approval by the Congress of People’s Deputies, the national Parliament. All that would be followed by perhaps a five-year delay to ensure a smooth transition.

A government statement, signed by Prime Minister Ryzhkov, was both conciliatory and accusatory. It said that Moscow views “with understanding the problems of political, social, economic, cultural and ethnic development” in Lithuania and respects “the striving of its people to strengthen the sovereignty of the republic and renovate its society.”

But it also accused the Lithuanian leadership of planning to turn over state-owned factories to private entrepreneurs, to issue its own currency and to establish customs posts on the republic’s borders. All these are elements in the economic development plans that members of Sajudis, the Lithuanian nationalist movement, have proposed, although action depends on the republic’s legislature.

Lithuania’s efforts to “undermine its links” with the rest of the Soviet Union would have “pernicious consequences” for the whole national economy, the government said in the statement, declaring its determination to protect the economy.

Although most of Monday’s measures were protective, described as intended to ensure smooth functioning of the economy, their purpose was clearly to prevent Lithuania from taking control of its whole economy and to uphold the authority of the central government.

Ceslovas Iskauskas, a commentator on Lithuanian Television, denounced the statement in a Vilnius broadcast.

“Such a big superpower is simply violating the constitutional law of a sovereign republic,” he said. “It is intimidation.”

Lithuania had sent a six-member delegation to Moscow with a letter from Landsbergis to Gorbachev replying to a resolution by the Congress of People’s Deputies last week declaring “invalid and illegal” Lithuania’s proclamation “re-establishing” its independence.

“We were made to understand that some sort of measures would be introduced,” Egidius Bichkauskas, a lawyer and former Communist Party member who headed the delegation, said after the meeting. “No one is panicking. We had to expect this. . . . It is a warning, an attempt to put pressure on us. . . .

“We do not rule out that some limited contingent (of soldiers) could be sent, but the reason given will be to safeguard the situation.”

On Sunday, Soviet warplanes buzzed Vilnius in what many Lithuanians consider an attempt at intimidation, and troops conducted maneuvers in the countryside in several areas of Lithuania.

Gennady I. Gerasimov, chief spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, said in Moscow that the operations were not extensive and had been planned long in advance.

But Landsbergis told Lithuanian legislators that the exercises had added to tensions with Moscow and that he has asked local commanders to notify his government well in advance of future maneuvers and to avoid “any coincidence with political developments.”

Many Lithuanians say they expect Moscow to impose an economic blockade, depriving the republic of the fuel and raw materials that it receives only from the Soviet Union if it proceeds with its plans for independence. But the government statement contained no such threats and, on the contrary, emphasized Moscow’s desire to maintain present economic ties.

En route to Africa, Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who is due to meet Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze during Namibia’s independence celebrations today, said he would raise the Lithuania dispute.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said the Bush Administration is “monitoring” the situation in Lithuania and repeated Bush’s desire to see negotiations take place between Lithuania and Moscow.

But Fitzwater declined to comment more specifically on the Soviet military maneuvers.

“We don’t want to say anything that would tend to exacerbate problems or attitudes on either side,” Fitzwater said.

The Administration continues to withhold recognition of Lithuania’s independence. U.S. recognition must await the point at which the Lithuanians are “in control of their territory,” Fitzwater said, repeating a statement President Bush made last week.

Gorbachev, worried about the spread of separatist feeling to the other two Baltic republics of Latvia and Estonia, also met Estonian President Arnold Ruutel and other members of the local Communist Party leadership here on Monday.

Participants in the meeting had agreed on “the need for prompt decisions to give a clear and full answer on the content of a renewed federation and independence of republican parties,” Tass reported later.

The Estonian Popular Front appeared to be headed for victory in the republic’s parliamentary elections last week, but final results are not due for several days because of the republic’s complicated voting system.

In Latvia, candidates backed by the Latvian Popular Front have secured 120 of the 170 seats decided in Sunday’s first-round elections in the republic, and the movement still hopes to win enough seats in the second round to give it the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution--and secede. The republic’s Parliament has a total of 201 seats.

Free-lance journalist Esther Schrader in Vilnius contributed to this story.