U.S. ‘Lectures’ Not Necessary, Gorbachev Says

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, baring his frustration at U.S. reaction to the Lithuania crisis, said Thursday that Americans should stop giving him “lectures” that could imperil achievements in superpower relations made since he came to power.

In talks with visiting Democratic senators, Gorbachev tried to shift the focus of U.S.-Soviet relations away from their current fixation on the Kremlin’s treatment of the breakaway Baltic republic. He stressed that he is determined to initial the framework for an accord to halve strategic nuclear arsenals at his summit meeting with President Bush in Washington, scheduled to begin May 30.

Gorbachev said he is ready to make concessions to close a deal on the draft of a strategic arms pact by then, but he added that he expects the President also to compromise.

The future of Lithuania overshadowed three days of talks held in Washington last week between Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to lay groundwork for the summit, the second between Bush and Gorbachev.

The Kremlin has been at odds with the republic since it unilaterally declared independence a month ago, a decision that Gorbachev and the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies have said is illegal and invalid.

After his meetings with Shevardnadze, Baker told reporters he made clear that a Soviet military crackdown in Lithuania would jeopardize the entire gamut of improved superpower relations.

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell said his seven-member delegation told Gorbachev much the same thing, face to face.

“A reversal would undoubtedly occur should the Soviet Union resort to force,” the Maine Democrat told a news conference after the meeting with Gorbachev, which lasted more than two hours. “Such action would, I advised President Gorbachev, have grave consequences for relations between our two countries.”

In remarks reported by the official Tass news agency, Gorbachev again said he did not wish to use force to impose the central government’s will on Lithuania, but he showed obvious pique at the scope the question has acquired in the superpower relationship.

“We do not need to be convinced that political methods are better,” Gorbachev told Mitchell’s group. “Not everything depends on us, however. And senators, like Americans in general, should realize this and avoid giving lectures.

“They might prompt resentment in our society, affecting Soviet-American relationships.”

The Baker-Shevardnadze talks made little apparent headway in narrowing disagreements in the strategic arms treaty negotiations. Baker said the superpowers had not yet “come to closure” on air- and sea-launched cruise missiles, or on how to distinguish between missiles with nuclear warheads, which would fall under the treaty, and those carrying high-explosive charges, which would not.

Gorbachev said he had personally intervened to narrow the gap, but said he also expects the Americans to do their part so that an agreement can take shape by the time Baker is next scheduled to visit Moscow, which is two weeks before the summit starts.

“I gave instructions to speed up work,” the Soviet president said. “We shall present our considerations by James Baker’s visit in May. We hope that he will not come with empty hands either.”

Gorbachev noted that he expects Bush to “meet him halfway.” Mitchell said that in separate talks, the senators were told by Shevardnadze that Moscow wants a finalized strategic arms treaty signed by the end of the year.

Including the majority leader, the visiting Senate Democratic delegation consisted of Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota, Wyche Fowler Jr. of Georgia, John Glenn of Ohio, Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland and Jim Sasser of Tennessee.

The inhabitants of the three Baltic republics--Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia--are striving at different cadences to restore the independence their homelands enjoyed between the world wars. Consigned to the Kremlin’s orbit by a secret 1939 Soviet-Nazi agreement, they were annexed by the Soviet Union the following year.

In Lithuania’s capital of Vilnius, the prime ministers of the three republics signed a “Baltic Common Market Agreement” on Thursday pledging mutual economic and political assistance. It foresees the elimination of trade barriers between the republics by 1992, mutually convertible currencies and an “open border” policy.

Lithuania’s prime minister, Kazimiera Prunskiene, said the pact shows pan-Baltic support for her beleaguered government and presages a disengagement of the three republics’ economies from the vast state-run bureaucracy now run from Moscow.

“The most important aspect of the treaty is political and moral support,” Prunskiene told reporters in Vilnius. “Economic cooperation obviously has economic aspects. The chief aim of this treaty is to remove the Soviet paws from our economy.”

Also Thursday, a mass student rally took place in the capital to support the independence declaration, according to Tass, the official Soviet news agency. It gave no details.

In another Baltic refusal to submit to policies made in Moscow, Estonia’s Parliament voted 71 to 3 to declare conscription for the Soviet army illegal in the republic and to abolish criminal penalties for draft-dodging.

The Estonian lawmakers called for talks with the Soviet Defense Ministry to discuss alternative civilian forms of service, and also asked Gorbachev to begin negotiations immediately “on the restoration of independence.”

There was no immediate Kremlin reaction to the Wednesday night vote by the Estonian Supreme Soviet, but the official news agency Tass, in its report on the session, complained that the decision “prods hundreds of youths to violate the Soviet law on universal military service.”

First Deputy Defense Minister Konstantin Kochetov had visited Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, on Saturday to insist that the spring call-up for the armed forces proceed as scheduled.

If Lithuania’s experience is a guide, the Estonian vote may provoke a tough response from Moscow. Lithuanian lawmakers passed a similar measure, but the Kremlin rejected it as illegal. Teams of Soviet soldiers were then sent into two mental hospitals to grab deserters taking refuge there.

Free-lance journalist Esther Schrader contributed to this report from Vilnius.