Lithuania Acts to Defuse Crisis : Secession: The republic puts off border control plans. A resolution urging citizens to surrender their arms is drafted.

Lithuanian leaders, stunned by the Soviet Union’s use of military power to assert its authority here but hoping to open talks soon on their plans to secede from the Soviet Union, on Wednesday backed away from their sharp confrontation with Moscow with two conciliatory moves.

The Lithuanian Council of Ministers drafted a resolution, expected to be approved today by the republic’s Parliament, urging citizens to turn over their weapons to the Interior Ministry and not to defy a decree of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev requiring the surrender of all civilian-held arms.

At the same time, the Lithuanian government put off as too confrontational its controversial plan to establish its own border controls, customs service and frontier guards, a high-risk step that would have effectively separated the republic from the rest of the Soviet Union if successful.

Taken together, the two Lithuanian actions “definitely mean we are moving into a compromise situation, and that is good,” said Deputy Premier Romualdas Ozolas, who disclosed the planned resolution on the weapons surrender.

Premier Kazimiera Prunskiene already is discussing with Gorbachev’s assistants the possibility of opening talks to resolve the crisis over Lithuania’s March 11 unilateral declaration of independence, officials here said, and she is expected to speak with Gorbachev shortly.

“We are ready to talk rationally, upholding our rights and abiding by our laws, but we do not want to withdraw the main issue of independence,” Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis told a press conference Wednesday evening.

Landsbergis, who is also chairman of Sajudis, the nationalist grass-roots movement that has campaigned for Lithuanian independence, made clear the limits of his government’s willingness to compromise.

“I do not think the Lithuanian people would be happy with this if it meant rejoining the Soviet Union,” he said of the possible terms of an agreement with Moscow.

But he indicated flexibility on holding a referendum on the question of secession as demanded by the central government, which contends that the republic’s Russian and Polish minorities, and even many Sajudis supporters, want to remain in the Soviet Union.

“I am ready to exchange opinions on any question, including the question of a referendum,” Landsbergis told reporters. “If the people will agree to a referendum, how could I not agree?”

Under a law passed last year with secession in mind, a referendum on any question may be demanded by 300,000 citizens in a petition.

In Moscow, Vadim V. Bakatin, the Soviet interior minister and a member of the new Presidential Council that acts as Gorbachev’s Cabinet, signaled the central government’s willingness to back away from the confrontation and to negotiate.

“Nobody will deprive any republic of the constitutional right to secede from the Soviet Union,” Bakatin told diplomats. “But the method chosen and the haste provoke doubts.

“The Lithuanian government and the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet should now do some thinking--is there any need for continuing the confrontation?”

Tensions that were so high here Tuesday after armed Soviet paratroopers burst into two psychiatric hospitals to arrest 23 military deserters, then occupied the headquarters of the independent Lithuanian Communist Party, eased significantly Wednesday.

Not only were no new incidents reported, but Soviet troops, who had been around Vilnius in increasing numbers, were much less evident in the city. And the army refrained from further attempts to round up military deserters, who are believed to number as many as 800.

Landsbergis, who just a day earlier had appealed to the West to rally to the defense of his small republic, said Wednesday evening, “We have a very normal, stable and peaceful situation now.”

Landsbergis advised Lithuanians not to resist if Soviet troops came to seize their hunting guns, apparently fearing that this could lead to many clashes and possible casualties across the republic.

Only about 1,000 of the 30,000 guns registered in Lithuania have been turned in to local police, Yaroslav Prokopovich, an official of the republic’s Interior Ministry, said Wednesday. Local police, further, were refusing to hand the weapons over to the Soviet army as Gorbachev ordered, according to Prokopovich.

The decision to postpone the establishment of a network of 37 border checkpoints was equally significant. The Kremlin had viewed the plan as Lithuania’s most provocative step toward independence, and Gorbachev had ordered the KGB, the Soviet security agency, to act to prevent it and then warned Landsbergis specifically not to recruit the planned frontier guards.

Ozolas said he believed that the central government, having demonstrated the effectiveness of using even limited military power here this week--its troops seized four buildings in Vilnius and several elsewhere in Lithuania in a calculated demonstration of force--is now pulling back.

“There have been no incidents in the last 24 hours, and that means there is a different situation,” he said. “We are proceeding to another political stage where Moscow no longer will be using only military force and, on the contrary, will prefer a political approach.”

Despite the easing of tensions and the improved prospects for a dialogue, the Soviet military Wednesday intensified its war of words against Lithuania, complaining of increased attacks on soldiers and accusing it of a campaign to discredit the Soviet army.

Col. Gen. Vladislav Achalov, the commander of Soviet paratroopers, alleged in Moscow that his soldiers had come under increasing attack since the declaration of independence.

“He believes that the attackers aimed to seize arms and provoke servicemen into opening fire,” the official news agency Tass reported.

Achalov told Tass there had been “a noticeable increase in incidents of provocation against soldiers and armed attacks by groups of young hooligans against both individual soldiers and military sites.”

He listed three recent attacks in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city, but said that two of the cases involved “hooligans” throwing stones at military guards.

The Soviet Defense Ministry, in a separate statement, charged that a Lithuanian campaign against the army served “those who want to satisfy their political ambitions and at the same time are leading events to chaos, destructive situations and the republic’s secession from the Soviet Union.”

For the Soviet military leadership, however, the issue that seems to be as much a concern as the challenge that Lithuania’s secession presents to the whole country is the recapture of the army deserters.

The Defense Ministry accused the Lithuanian government of giving passports to deserters from the Soviet army and sheltering them from Soviet authorities.

“The republic’s Interior Ministry organs refuse to take steps to detain them and bring them back to their army units,” its statement complained.

Gen. Valentin I. Varennikov, commander of Soviet land forces in Lithuania, said 23 deserters were seized Tuesday when Soviet troops raided the two psychiatric hospitals in Lithuania. He contended that the deserters had become “militants” in the nationalist movement and were “undergoing special training” at the hospitals.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher discussed the Lithuanian crisis with Gorbachev during a 50-minute telephone conversation Wednesday, urging a politically negotiated settlement and no provocation from either side in the tense situation.

Thatcher, one of Gorbachev’s leading supporters in the West, repeated the call for restraint that she had made earlier, according to British officials in London.

The phone call was arranged some time ago through diplomatic channels, but it gave Thatcher a chance to emphasize her concern, British officials said.

Schrader, a free-lance journalist, reported from Vilnius, and Times staff writer Parks from Moscow.