2-Day Threat for Lithuania : Vital Goods Halt Looms -Gorbachev

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev threatened today to cut off the flow of vital goods to the Baltic Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic if it refused to rescind its declaration of independence within two days.

It was the Kremlin’s strongest move yet against the republic’s breakaway leadership, which has called for talks with Moscow on its future but refused to back down on its independence proclamation of March 11.

Gorbachev, in a letter to the Lithuanian leadership published by the Tass news agency, said laws passed by the republic’s Parliament sought to “undermine the country’s political and social economic stability.”

“If within two days the Supreme Soviet and the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian S.S.R. do not repeal their . . . decisions, instructions will be issued to stop deliveries to the Lithuanian S.S.R. . . . of those types of production sold on the external market for freely convertible currency,” it said.

The letter, also signed by Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, did not say which goods would be involved. But items sold for foreign currency would certainly include goods vital to the Lithuanian economy, such as gas, oil and machinery.

The threat came four days after Gorbachev’s policy-making Presidential Council said political, economic and other measures would be taken if the Lithuanians failed to return to what it said were constitutional means.

But British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday that the Soviet leadership had assured him there would be no interruption in the flow of goods necessary to the republic’s economy.

Gorbachev said several laws adopted by the Lithuanian Parliament since the proclamation “can no longer be tolerated,” including a call to boycott military service and introduction of a “citizenship certificate” deemed discriminatory against Soviet citizens.

These measures, the letter said, set Lithuania “against other republics and the Soviet Union as a whole.”

“Other constituent republics are asking quite rightly why they should continue supplying production to Lithuania at the expense of their own needs, while the Lithuanian leadership disregards the interests of the entire country’s economy,” it said.

“We do not wish to see matters reaching the point of using this measure, but this depends entirely on the leadership of the Lithuanian S.S.R.”

On Thursday, Lithuania and the neighboring republics of Latvia and Estonia announced that they would form a “Baltic Market” to develop a common economic strategy and closer ties.

Lithuania was forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 along with Estonia and Latvia. Estonia and Latvia have also declared their intention to seek independence but are proceeding more cautiously than Lithuania.

In the month since Lithuania declared its independence, the Kremlin has been alternating its tone from threatening to conciliatory and back. Soviet troops have occupied some buildings in the capital of Vilnius, and conscripts who refused to serve in the Red Army were detained forcibly.