Soviets Offer Way Out for Lithuanians : Secession: Gorbachev proposes a ‘freeze’ on the declaration of independence. Republic’s leaders are cool to the initiative.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Saturday again opened a potential path of compromise for Lithuania, the Soviet Union’s secessionist republic, suggesting that it “freeze” its unilateral declaration of independence, but Lithuanian leaders remained critical of the Kremlin’s terms.

Arkady A. Maslennikov, the presidential press secretary, praised a proposal by France and West Germany on negotiations to resolve the stalemated Lithuanian crisis, describing as “a constructive signal” the suggestion that Lithuania suspend implementation of its declaration of independence.

Lithuanian leaders have also voiced positive opinions about the French-West German initiative, a letter they received last week proposing that Lithuania temporarily defer action on its independence drive.

Maslennikov’s statement, the Soviet leadership’s first public reaction to the initiative, was a new move by the Kremlin to point the way to a political solution to the Lithuanian stalemate.

“The center, Moscow, the president, does not insist on rescinding or denouncing the declaration of independence,” Maslennikov told reporters at a Kremlin briefing. “What should take place is that they should not insist on its implementation.

“They can find ways of freezing it, or putting a moratorium on it, and returning to the constitution. They may change it (because) whatever they do with that declaration belongs to them. But we cannot start with that declaration as a legal basis--it is illegal.”

This was Gorbachev’s second overture in a week to Lithuania, and it reflected an express desire by the Soviet president to bring the prolonged crisis to an end before it further undermines the country’s stability and affects its relations with the West.

“We consider that this is not far from the line that the Soviet leadership has been pursuing from the very beginning,” Maslennikov said of the initiative by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and President Francois Mitterrand of France. “We consider this a constructive signal. . . . We want to pursue it.”

In Vilnius, Vytautas Landsbergis, the Lithuanian president, said he, too, sees the Kohl-Mitterrand letter as positive and implied that his government would welcome their mediation of the dispute with Moscow.

“We will suggest that the initiative of these leaders not end with this letter,” Landsbergis said, adding that Lithuanian leaders are preparing their reply to this and other recent political initiatives. “We hope for their mediation.”

Lithuania still refuses, he continued, to suspend its March 11 declaration of independence and would find it difficult even to suspend the mass of legislation it has adopted since then.

“We cannot suspend the declaration because it is linked with a lot of other legal acts,” Landsbergis said.

He all but ruled out suspension, or “freezing,” of the declaration of independence because it would mean accepting the validity of the Soviet constitution and of Soviet law in Lithuania.

“We reject that in principle, and it would make our situation even worse because we would be voluntarily rejoining the Soviet Union,” he contended.

Although Moscow and Vilnius have begun to approach one another on a basis for negotiation, they remain so opposed on the most fundamental issue--their views of the Lithuanian declaration of independence--that no early compromise is likely.

Maslennikov has twice before indicated Gorbachev’s willingness to interpret a suspension of the Lithuanian declaration as sufficient to open a “dialogue,” but officials in Vilnius have maintained adamantly that the declaration must stand and state-to-state “negotiations,” a term they insist upon, must be held on its implementation.

Lithuania has sent three delegations to Moscow in the hope of arranging top-level talks, but there has been only one discussion at Politburo level. The last delegation returned on Friday after being told there could be no talks until Lithuania “returned to the position on March 10,” that is, before the declaration of independence.

Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene, who leaves today for Canada and the United States to plead Lithuania’s cause and seek economic assistance, said Saturday--as she has before--that a suspension of legislation implementing the declaration might be negotiated if it did not lead to “backtracking” on the republic’s independence itself.

“We must now give concrete substance to the abstract proposal (by Mitterrand and Kohl) and evaluate, law by law, what could be frozen,” she said. “We shall not freeze the declaration (of independence) itself, but the implementation of it.”

Other Lithuanian officials, speaking privately, said that the republic would show more flexibility on this issue if it had guarantees that negotiations would go forward quickly and lead to early independence under the March 11 declaration.

Maslennikov, asked whether Gorbachev would be satisfied with a temporary suspension of the declaration of independence, replied, “Yes, you may say so, without specifying what temporary is because some would say two weeks. . . . How long would they need to sort out all these questions?”

Moscow’s interest is in resolution of the issue, he continued, and it will demonstrate maximum flexibility, once the initial question of the basis for the talks--whether it will be the Soviet constitution as the Kremlin insists or the Lithuanian declaration of independence as Vilnius wants--is settled.

“If they fly or walk (to Moscow) or send a telegram or representatives, it is up to them to decide,” Maslennikov said. “We are not prescribing. We are only asking them to return to the basic position on the constitution and law of this country.”

Maslennikov earlier last week also urged Lithuanian officials to suspend the implementation of their declaration of independence, stressing that how they did so was up to them. And Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov had suggested that they suspend three of the laws enacted since the declaration as a gesture of goodwill to which the Soviet government would then respond.

Those laws--on Lithuanian citizenship, on military service and on property of the Communist Party--could be suspended, Prunskiene said Friday, but Lithuania wants to know precisely how Moscow would respond.

The Soviet government, meanwhile, has continued to increase its pressure on Lithuania, tightening its economic blockade of the republic.

Coal shipments were cut off on Saturday following an end to oil deliveries and a 70% reduction in supplies of natural gas.

Ceslovas Jarsenas, a Lithuanian government spokesman, said that Moscow had also halted delivery of rubber, plastics, timber, fish, coffee, tea, cooking oil, alcoholic beverages, newsprint, tractors, automobiles and vehicle spare parts. Rationing of some foods will begin this week.