Bush Repeats an Injunction to Moscow: Use Restraint in Lithuania : Superpowers: The Kremlin’s latest steps do not fit his definition of ‘peaceful evolution,’ the President says.

President Bush on Thursday called again on the Soviet Union to allow “peaceful evolution” in Lithuania and said he does not believe recent Soviet moves serve that end.

“It is very important that force not be used,” Bush said.

Asked if Soviet decisions to restrict access to Lithuania and increase the power of the KGB’s internal security police fit his definition of “peaceful evolution,” Bush replied: “No, I wouldn’t put that down as peaceful evolution.” But, he cautioned, “we see varying reports as to how much implementation there has been” of the Kremlin’s orders.

Over the past year, the Soviets have shown restraint in handling threats to their control, Bush noted. “Please continue to exercise that kind of restraint,” he urged the Soviet officials at a press conference. “And remember--no use of force.”

The White House, so far, tends to accept at face value Soviet announcements that they do not intend to use force in Lithuania.

“That’s the one thing (Soviet President Mikhail S.) Gorbachev has really shied away from,” said a senior Administration official, pointing out that the Soviet leader has used force only in the ethnically troubled and violence-plagued Caucasus region. “He thinks it would really do violence to the principle he’s tried to establish, and that is the rule of law.”

At the same time, however, the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, criticized Gorbachev for waiting too long before tackling the developments in Lithuania.

“For a long time, Gorbachev did very little and let this whole thing just come on down the chute until now it’s gone beyond the point of easily reversing or slowing down. Now he seems to be trying to put the brakes on. . . . Maybe he really didn’t face up to it, with his other problems.”

He added that Gorbachev’s seeming reluctance to deal with the independence movement raises questions about “his decisiveness in setting bottom lines and sticking to them.”

“He has enormous skills in his own power relationships, but in dealing with crises. . . he’s not yet been able to solve any of them,” the official said.

For Bush, the independence movement in Lithuania has posed a particular dilemma.

The President has invested heavily in Gorbachev, frequently praising him and his perestroika reform program. And the Administration is engaged in a series of major negotiations with the Soviets on both nuclear and conventional arms reductions.

For those reasons, the Administration does not wish to draw lines in the sand, threatening Gorbachev with reprisals should he overstep. Asked what the United States might do if the Soviet crackdown on Lithuania intensifies, Bush called the question “too hypothetical.”

On the other hand, the United States has a long history of supporting Lithuanian independence. It has never recognized the 1940 annexation of the republic by Josef Stalin. Bush and his aides cannot easily accept a forcible crackdown in Lithuania the way they accepted Moscow’s use of troops to put down ethnic violence in Soviet Azerbaijan.

Administration officials in recent days have warned that Soviet use of force against Lithuania could severely damage U.S.-Soviet relations.

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher detailed the Administration’s view. “We are concerned by the order to have internal security and secret police troops seize private sporting guns,” he said. “The Soviet move tries to suggest that there is a threat to public order from the Lithuanians. We believe, however, that the Lithuanians are committed to a peaceful resolution of their differences with the Soviet Union.”

The Soviet moves to tighten visa controls and restrict the ability of foreigners to visit Lithuania “in our view contradicts the Soviet’s commitment to a more open society and to contact between countries.”

Statements by Soviet officials saying force will not be used in Lithuania are “most welcome,” Boucher said. “We expect them to stand by those.”

A few hours before Bush spoke, a senior West German official visiting Washington said the Bonn government sees Lithuania as essentially an internal Soviet matter.

Asked if a Soviet crackdown would derail East-West negotiations on arms control or German unification, Irmgard Adam-Schwaetzer, West German minister of state for foreign affairs, said, “No, I don’t think so.

“To employ force never produces a viable solution, but this is not something we would take up in public. We might talk to the Soviet Union privately, but not publicly.”

“Lithuania and the central government of the Soviet Union have to solve their debate themselves,” she added. “We are not thinking sticks and carrots and penalties.”

In addressing other topics at this press conference, Bush:

* Criticized members of Congress seeking to cut his $800-million package of aid for Panama and Nicaragua and redirect some of the money to Eastern Europe. “This is our hemisphere. . . . We must meet the challenge,” he said.

* Promised to “negotiate and deal openly” with whatever government, led by the Likud Party or Labor Party, emerges in Israel. He denied that his statements opposing the establishment of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem had contributed to the fall of the Yitzhak Shamir government.

* Tried again to assuage Polish fears about Warsaw’s limited role in talks on German unification, saying “a nuance of difference” remains between the Poles and Germans on the border question and “they are very, very close now.” Visiting Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki wants a treaty guaranteeing Poland’s borders before the two Germanys unify.

Bush added that there is no need for Soviet troops to be stationed in Poland or elsewhere in Eastern Europe. “And the sooner they get out of there, the better,” he said.

Times staff writers James Gerstenzang and Doyle McManus contributed to this story.