Oil and Gas Flow Normal, Lithuania Officials Report

Oil and natural gas flowed normally into Lithuania today, officials of the breakaway government said, despite Moscow’s announced plan to halt the supplies to curb the republic’s independence drive.

Lithuanian officials said they had expected the Kremlin to begin cutting oil and natural gas supplies early today to enforce Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s threatened economic embargo.

Soviet troops were seen near a pumping station at an oil refinery in northwestern Lithuania this morning, but there was no change in the supply of fuel at the facility, according to a report on Lithuanian television.

Lithuania’s energy minister said oil supplies were normal and he had not been informed of any planned reductions.

Lithuanian gas officials received a telegram late Monday from the acting general director of the Soviet Union’s western gas network saying natural gas supplies would be “sharply reduced from the 17th of April.”

On Friday, Gorbachev threatened to impose an embargo of critical supplies unless Lithuania rescinded within 48 hours several laws meant to bolster its March 11 declaration of independence. Lithuanian leaders have made no move to meet Gorbachev’s demands, but say they are willing to negotiate. Gorbachev refuses to meet with them until they rescind their declaration of independence.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III today told the House Ways and Means Committee that U.S. support for perestroika, Gorbachev’s economic reform program, is at risk.

“Our bilateral commercial contacts with the U.S.S.R. may be more directly in their interest than in ours. And those contacts are being put to risk by Soviet actions in Lithuania,” Baker said.

Baker did not specify which commercial ties could be harmed if the Soviets suppress the independence movement in the Baltic republic. But Senate minority leader Bob Dole of Kansas and others in Congress who have taken a hard line toward Moscow are suggesting a suspension of superpower trade talks.

Lithuania’s parliament, the Supreme Council, met today to forge an official response to the Soviet leader, and they were still debating the tone of the resolution into the afternoon, said Rita Dapkus of the legislature’s Information Office. Also under sharp discussion was the composition of a delegation to be sent to Moscow, she said.

Also today, a Soviet mental patient hijacked a plane in Moscow and forced it to fly to Lithuania, saying he wanted to help the breakaway republic in its independence struggle.

A spokeswoman for Radio Vilnius said the unidentified man, who carried a package which he claimed contained explosives, surrendered quietly when the plane landed in the Lithuanian capital. No weapons were found.