Lithuania Will Begin to Ration Food

Lithuanian lawmakers decided today to impose food rationing May 1 as the rebellious republic continued to struggle under an economic blockade that has reduced its supplies of fuel and medicine.

Lithuania widened efforts to circumvent sanctions imposed last week by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who wants Lithuania to rescind laws designed to implement its March 11 declaration of independence.

A Lithuanian delegation was due in the northern Russian city of Leningrad on Friday to talk with local officials about a direct exchange of goods either for hard currency or barter, a Leningrad journalist said.

In addition, Estonia today ordered its railways to defy the Soviet blockade, and Latvia ended gasoline sales for private cars.

Estonia, itself moving step by step toward independence, said it will deliver all goods ordered by neighboring Lithuania.

Juhan Hindov, spokesman for the Estonian prime minister, said the republic’s railways have been instructed to disregard orders from the central ministry in Moscow to halt deliveries.

“Estonia continues to send goods to Lithuania, and as far as I know all shipments are moving normally,” he said by telephone from the Estonian capital, Tallinn.

The move was in direct defiance of a Kremlin bid to strangle the Lithuanian economy with a blockade steadily expanded from fuel to include parts vital to factories, cloth and imported industrial materials.

Lithuania’s prime minister, Kazimiera Prunskiene, announced Wednesday that Lithuania had halted its usual supplies of meat, milk and other food products to the rest of the Soviet Union. She instead urged Lithuania to settle its accounts with the republics “almost in marketplace conditions” of bartering for other goods.