Soviets Send Tanks to Join Reinforced Lithuania Units

Columns of armored vehicles rolled through the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius on Sunday, underscoring President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s warning that “grave consequences” will result if the Baltic republic does not annul its unilateral declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.

Twenty-eight armored personnel carriers, apparently part of military reinforcements for the Soviet army’s garrison in Vilnius, arrived by train early Sunday and at mid-morning rumbled through the capital to a military compound near the center of the city, according to a Lithuanian government spokesman.

Later, a squadron of light tanks belonging to a paratroop unit arrived and, after a swing through central Vilnius, also went to the compound, the spokesman said.

Altogether, as many as 60 armored vehicles as well as support vehicles were reported to have been brought to Vilnius on Sunday in what appeared to be a significant military buildup there. Army engineers were finishing a helicopter landing pad near the city’s airport, and military technicians were completing a new communications center.

“Vilnius was as quiet and peaceful and pleasant as you could hope a city might be on a Sunday morning in spring,” Aidas Palubinskas of Lithuania’s Government Information Office said by telephone. “The only instability here is caused by these military movements. We understand that they are trying to frighten us and force us to yield.”

But the Lithuanian leadership, showing no willingness to back down despite this intensification of the prolonged “war of nerves” with Moscow, called for mass rallies in the capital and in the republic’s other towns Wednesday to demonstrate continued determination to seek Lithuania’s independence in the face of Gorbachev’s ultimatum.

“I regret that President Gorbachev does not hear the voices inviting the Soviet Union to begin negotiations with Lithuania,” Vytautas Landsbergis, the Lithuanian president, said in a statement Sunday. “We have made this offer repeatedly, but our hand is repeatedly rejected. Now, Mr. Gorbachev has rejected our offer in a very harsh manner, and we are surprised by his threats. . . .”

Declaring that Gorbachev is asking “impossible things” in telling Lithuania to abrogate its declaration of independence and accept without qualification its status as a Soviet republic, Landsbergis said: “It cannot now be demanded that we annul what we bore in our hearts.”

Gorbachev, in appeals over the weekend to the Lithuanian Supreme Council, the republic’s Parliament, and to the Lithuanian people, had called on them to end their secessionist drive and accept the Soviet constitution as the framework for discussing their grievances.

“If the voice of reason is not heeded now, developments can have grave consequences for all of us,” Gorbachev had said, alluding to the dangers that confront Lithuania and the Soviet Union as a whole if the republic pursues its present course.

The Soviet president left the warning vague, saying only that the republic’s drive for independence would prove to be “ruinous and could only lead to a dead end.”

Landsbergis, replying Sunday evening on the Soviet Union’s national nightly news program, said Gorbachev’s statement had come as a shock. “I view it as a strange and virtually undisguised threat,” he said.

The Lithuanian Supreme Council is scheduled to consider Gorbachev’s appeal this afternoon, and the republic’s leadership met for more than six hours Sunday, first as the council’s Presidium and then as Sajudis, the Lithuanian nationalist movement, to assess the political situation.

Landsbergis said before the meetings that he would send Lithuania’s negotiators back to Moscow today with the assignment of setting up a meeting with Soviet officials.

Lithuania is “ready to negotiate and discuss any questions with the Soviet Union--except that of independence,” said Kazimieras Motieka, a deputy prime minister and a Sajudis leader.

Another Sajudis official commented: “We have only one card in our hands--our declaration of independence. If we throw that away, we have thrown everything away.”

Meanwhile, an article in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda on the new Soviet presidency as an institution noted that, for Gorbachev, “the knot (over Lithuania) is getting tighter every day.”

“The ‘Lithuanian question’ has become the first test for the president,” Alexai Karpychev, a political commentator, wrote. “What will President Gorbachev do? This problem is of concern for politicians and diplomats.

“The president is sending telegrams, and Landsbergis demonstratively denounces them because the president of a foreign state has no authority to issue orders on Lithuanian territory. . . . The West is discussing whether force can be used. Even in faraway Africa, where the paths of our foreign minister and the American secretary of state cross, the ‘Lithuanian question’ was under discussion.”

The clear implication is that Gorbachev, in addition to his own strong personal feelings on Lithuanian secession, is under intense pressure from a dozen sources--all the more so because it is seen as a crucial test of his presidency.

The differences between the Lithuanian nationalists and the Soviet government are so great, however, that even the process of negotiation will require hard bargaining.

Moscow contends that it “negotiates” only with foreign governments and will simply “discuss” issues with Lithuania, but Lithuania wants the recognition that “negotiates” would imply and, up to now, has insisted on such talks outside the framework of the Soviet laws and the country’s constitution.

The Soviet constitution assures the 15 constituent republics the right to secede from the Soviet Union, but it offers no mechanism for doing so. Legislation is now under consideration that would establish such procedures, but the first drafts provide for extensive negotiations, a five-year “cooling off period” and finally a national veto over any secession.

Lithuania received further support on Sunday from Estonian and Latvian nationalists and from nationalist and radical groups in Moscow, across the Ukraine and in other parts of the country.

The Latvian Popular Front, addressing the West, urged that political and economic pressure be put on the Soviet Union to negotiate with the Lithuanians.

“We appeal to you not to leave the Baltic states at the mercy of the totalitarian superpower, the Soviet Union, which has never abandoned any territory that it has occupied,” the Latvian group said. “We believe and hope that support for Gorbachev by the governments of the democratic states does not mean the betrayal of the Baltic states in 1990.”

Western powers, many of which have never recognized the forced incorporation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the Soviet Union in 1940, have been hesitant to support Lithuanian independence out of concern that it would undermine Gorbachev and his reform policies.