Lithuania Oil Cutoff Report Stirs Confusion

The Lithuanian government said Wednesday night that the Soviets have shut off the flow of petroleum to the breakaway Baltic state as the first salvo in an “economic warfare” campaign, but confusion reigned about both what Moscow has done and its ultimate intentions.

There was no sign that natural gas supplies to Lithuania have been curtailed.

Bronius Vainora, the director of . Lithuania’s only refinery, at Mazeikiai, said the flow of crude received in a pipeline from Byelorussia stopped completely by 10:30 p.m., about an hour after he received a telephone call informing him that the deliveries would cease.

Vainora, quoted by the official Lithuanian Information Bureau, said he was told that a document authorizing the cutoff had been signed by the Soviet prime minister, Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, in accordance with a resolution by the Council of Ministers, the Soviet Cabinet, that ordered a halt in Lithuanian oil deliveries.

The Lithuanians have long feared economic sanctions would be imposed by Moscow as a way to break their drive to secede from the Soviet Union, a nation they were forced to join 40 years ago along with the two other then-independent Baltic states, Estonia and Latvia.

On Friday, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev gave Lithuania 48 hours to rescind legislation supporting its March 11 declaration of independence, or face a halt in supplies of goods the Soviets can export for hard currency, like natural gas and oil.

Lithuanian leaders defied that deadline, and on Tuesday a telegram was read in the Lithuanian Parliament in Vilnius, the Baltic republic’s capital, from the director of a Soviet natural gas distribution company that said gas supplies were to be reduced sharply. The republic’s prime minister, Kazimiera Prunskiene, said later she had been told the crude oil supply would dry up Wednesday morning.

News was flashed around the world of what seemed to be the first salvo in the Soviet Union’s economic war to force Lithuania to recognize Moscow’s continuing right to rule. But Wednesday afternoon, the official Soviet news agency Tass distributed a denial that oil or gas supplies to Lithuania had been cut or terminated.

“We have received no instructions on this score,” Aklim Mukhamedzyanov, deputy Soviet oil and gas minister, told Tass.

An Oil Ministry engineer, Vadim Kozhevnikov, said in a telephone interview that a “secret letter” was given to the ministry stating specifically that all supplies to Lithuania would continue as usual until further notice.

The Lithuanians confirmed at the time that there had been no interruption in the flow of oil and natural gas, for which they are completely dependent on Moscow, and they breathed easier. The president, Vytautas Landsbergis, speculated that Gorbachev had backed down after realizing an energy boycott would hurt neighboring regions of the Soviet northwest or because of international pressures.

Then came the Mazeikiai director’s announcement, which could not be independently verified. Landsbergis said early today that “economic warfare” by the Soviets had begun.

“It is hard to imagine why the people of Lithuania, irrespective of nationality and creed, are being punished. What is their crime?” Landsbergis said, referring to the large numbers of ethnic Russians, Poles and Byelorussians among Lithuania’s 3.8 million people.

The president, who led the Supreme Council, the Parliament, in its March 11 unilateral proclamation of independence, said the Kremlin’s action would stiffen Lithuanian resolve, and seemed to predict that it would make Western aid to his beleaguered government more likely.

“The Soviet Union’s actions concerning Lithuania will strengthen the process of self-determination everywhere: in Lithuania, in the U.S.S.R., in the Western world. All political forces will have to take a clear stand,” Landsbergis said, in a statement distributed by the Lithuanian Information Bureau.

Prime Minister Prunskiene had already left Vilnius for Norway, apparently to seek an agreement to buy quantities of its North Sea oil if Moscow imposed its blockade.

Lithuanian lawmakers, meanwhile, drafted a telegram to Gorbachev offering to declare a moratorium on the passage of new legislation bolstering their independence declaration if Moscow agrees to open talks before May 1 with envoys from the republic.

But they rejected Gorbachev’s demand, which he linked to the threat to cut off raw materials, that measures already approved be rescinded, including a call for new Lithuanian draftees to refuse to serve in the Soviet army and the introduction of Lithuanian “citizenship certificates” replacing Soviet identity cards.

The lawmakers also adopted a declaration urging Lithuanians to prepare for possible economic sanctions and asking their cooperation if rationing plans have to be put into effect.

Officials have previously said the Mazeikiai refinery, located on the Baltic Sea coast near Klaipeda, has only enough reserves to continue work for a day and a half. Director Vainora said it would operate “for the time being.” He said he had no indication of when the flow of oil via the pipeline might resume.

Gasoline, diesel fuel, fuel oil and other products from the refinery are distributed from Byelorussia to Leningrad, so the effects of its shutdown would be widespread.

By bringing economic pressure to bear on independence-minded Lithuania, Gorbachev would have had to take into account a number of conflicting factors, foreign and domestic.

Those who oppose the breakup of the Soviet Union, including the majority of the Communist Party leadership and the military, are said to be pushing him to use his new powers as president to take tough action, up to and including the dispatch of a personal representative to Vilnius to govern temporarily.

On the other hand, the United States and Western European governments have insistently called for dialogue to resolve the issue, and President Bush said Tuesday he would take “appropriate responses” if Moscow reduced fuel supplies to Lithuania.

The Kremlin had so far relied on demonstrations of military movements, the takeover of several Communist Party buildings and toughly worded warnings in an effort to persuade Lithuania’s leaders to renounce the independence proclamation. The Lithuanians have said they are ready to negotiate on everything, except that.

The response to Gorbachev from the Lithuanian Parliament, signed by Landsbergis, expressed “regret over the position and methods of the U.S.S.R.”

On Tuesday, the Parliament considered meeting Gorbachev’s demand that pro-independence legislation already approved be rescinded. But lawmakers decided that “if we made a concession, we would imply that the policy of a blockade gets results,” Landsbergis said. “We did not want to give that impression.”

But the Parliament’s telegram to Gorbachev and Ryzhkov said that Lithuania is “ready to discuss any questions bearing in mind the legitimate strategic interests of the Soviet Union and its citizens.”

“If preliminary parliamentary consultations start before May 1,” the Parliament response said, “we are prepared not to adopt any new legislative acts during the period (of consultations). We are forming a delegation of deputies for these consultations that we hope will arrive in Moscow in the nearest future to meet your representatives.”

Gorbachev has in the past repeatedly refused to negotiate with the Baltic republic, saying this would be treating Lithuania as if it were a foreign country instead of one of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics.

Times staff writer Hamilton reported from Moscow and Schrader, a free-lance journalist, from Vilnius. Times staff writer John-Thor Dahlburg also contributed to this report.

AMERICAN DILEMMA--Washington tries to determine facts on oil situation. A9