Gorbachev May Offer to Negotiate Lithuania Secession : Independence: Moscow indicated that the crucial issue is not whether, but how, the republic withdraws.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, after warning Lithuania that further measures would be taken to halt its attempt to secede unilaterally from the Soviet Union, held open the possibility Tuesday that Moscow would negotiate the Baltic republic’s withdrawal from the country.

“If the Lithuanian people . . . still want to secede from the Soviet Union, then it will be their right, provided for by the constitution and the recently approved (secession) law,” Gorbachev told Douglas Hurd, the visiting British foreign secretary.

“But everything should proceed strictly within the framework of legality. The president’s duty, as in any other country, is to protect the constitution, and this will be done.”

From Gorbachev’s comments and those of other Soviet officials, it was clear that the crucial issue is not Lithuanian independence--Moscow accepts the inevitability of that--but how it will be achieved.

On this, there was some movement Tuesday on the Soviet side, none on the Lithuanian.

Arkady A. Maslennikov, Gorbachev’s press secretary, confirmed the central government’s readiness to increase its political and economic pressure on Lithuania, and he again demanded that the republic annul the declaration of independence it made last month.

But Maslennikov also suggested a way to meet Moscow’s demand that Lithuania revert to its previous status by suspending the implementation of all the acts, laws and resolutions adopted since declaring its independence.

“We are not saying, ‘Please, stop thinking about independence,’ ” Maslennikov told reporters at a Kremlin briefing. “We are saying, ‘Don’t do it overnight. Don’t tear up well-established economic, political and other links, including defense.’ ”

While repeating the demand that the Lithuanian nationalists abandon their declaration of independence, Maslennikov added: “If they are afraid of losing face, they can do something like proclaim a moratorium on all these laws . . . and say that they are ready to talk on the basis of the constitution.”

The new Presidential Council, meeting under Gorbachev’s chairmanship, ordered further sanctions against Lithuania this week to end its secessionist efforts. Gorbachev said Tuesday that he could use his power of direct presidential rule if the dispute were to grow into civilian conflict.

Vytautas Landsbergis, the Lithuanian president, responded with a plea to Gorbachev not to let the crisis escalate.

“We are very concerned that ultra-rightist, imperial forces are compelling you to take a wrong step--to continue the wrongs of the 1940s in the Baltics,” Landsbergis said in a telegram to Gorbachev. “Do not further this, please. In the name of peace, justice and concord on earth, do not do this.”

Other Lithuanian officials, meanwhile, stepped up their search for alternative supplies of vital materials, particularly fuel, in anticipation of reduced allocations from the central government.

“In case they are going to cut our telephone lines or end our supplies of fuel, I do not want to give the impression that the Lithuanian people or their government bodies are going to repeal independence,” Kazimieras Motieka, the Lithuanian vice president, said in the capital, Vilnius.

Although Lithuanian industrial managers and economic planners have studied the republic’s vulnerability to a Soviet boycott, they have concluded that they can do little except attempt to cope. There has been only limited stockpiling, and most of the promised assistance from other republics would be hard to transport across the Soviet Union to Lithuania.

“I feel like all the citizens of this republic--frustrated,” Motieka said. “We are facing the threat of the Soviet military machine, and we are very weak in face of it. We appeal to justice. We know that the laws we have adopted are legal and valid. So, we feel calm and patient, but if we were not so confident that we are in the right it would be very hard to be calm.”

Gorbachev, who had addressed delegates to a national congress of the Communist Youth League earlier Tuesday, said the government was “striving to find a political solution to the problem,” the official Soviet news agency Tass reported.

“At the same time, he did not rule out the possibility of the introduction of presidential rule,” Tass said, “but only if the situation acquires the form of a civilian conflict or confrontation.”

Under constitutional amendments approved last month by the Congress of People’s Deputies (Parliament), Gorbachev has the right to rule an area of the country directly “in the interests of citizens’ security.”

Gorbachev again stressed his determination to protect the country’s integrity and uphold its constitution, and he lamented that the Lithuanian leadership’s “adventurist actions” have put at risk his domestic reforms and the Soviet Union’s improved relations with the West.

Esther Schrader, a free-lance journalist, contributed to this report from Vilnius.