Lithuania on Baker’s Agenda for Talks With Shevardnadze

Secretary of State James A. Baker III will seek new assurances about Soviet treatment of Lithuania from Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze during three days of talks between the two officials, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

During sessions that begin today in Washington, Baker also is expected to ask Shevardnadze for an explanation of the clandestine transfers of SS-23 missiles from the Soviet Union to three East European allies, other officials said.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said Lithuania “will be at the top of (Baker’s) agenda” after Moscow’s recent efforts to rein in the secession-minded Baltic state.

After meeting Shevardnadze in Namibia two weeks ago, Baker said he had been assured that Moscow would not use force to crush the Lithuanian independence bid.

But U.S. officials said the secretary of state would seek more specific assurances this week on how far the Soviets expect to carry their campaign of intimidation.

President Bush, meanwhile, said he hopes that Shevardnadze’s visit will produce a date for his next summit conference with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The meeting is expected to take place in Washington during the second half of June.

“I’d like to get that determined,” Bush told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew from Indiana to Michigan during a day of political fund-raising speeches in Indianapolis and Dearborn.

Bush said he had not yet received a personal reply to the message he dispatched to Gorbachev last Thursday. In the message, Bush was said to have appealed for a peaceful solution to the Lithuanian crisis and to have assured Gorbachev that the United States is “not trying to make things difficult” for either side in the confrontation.

Shevardnadze, on his arrival in Washington on Tuesday, repeated that the Soviets want an “honest dialogue” with Lithuania on independence.

He dodged a question about whether the Lithuanian crisis would interfere with the planned summit of Bush and Gorbachev. Shevardnadze will meet Bush on Friday.

A Pentagon official said the disclosure that East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria had received SS-23 missiles from Moscow “will certainly be taken up by Baker with Shevardnadze.”

U.S. officials have accused Moscow of violating the spirit, although not the letter, of a 1987 treaty that banned SS-23s and other medium-range missiles from the U.S. and Soviet arsenals by transferring the weapons to the three countries.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.