Lithuanians Reported Ready to Vote on Plan to End Blockade

The Lithuanian Parliament will vote this week on a compromise offer to try to end Moscow’s economic blockade and open the way to negotiations on independence, an adviser to the republic’s leadership said Sunday evening.

Antanas J. Buracas, a political economist and adviser to President Vytautas Landsbergis, said by telephone from the capital, Vilnius, that a compromise plan is being drafted for consideration by Parliament within the next few days.

The announcement came as Soviet officials said that they will resume supplying natural gas to a major Lithuanian fertilizer plant, the first break in Moscow’s two-week-old energy embargo. The decision was the latest of several signs of progress toward an end to the political stalemate that began March 11 with Lithuania’s declaration of independence.

Meanwhile, 10,000 people packed Cathedral Square in Vilnius late Sunday to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which Landsbergis has turned into the independence movement’s unofficial anthem.

At the end of the performance, broadcast in towns and villages across the republic, the emotional crowd broke into shouts of “Lithuania! Lithuania!” witnesses said.

In the neighboring republic of Latvia, the nationalist Popular Front suffered a setback Sunday in key runoff elections, winning only four of the 17 remaining seats in the Latvian Parliament and falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for an aggressive secession campaign.

The election, four days before Parliament is expected vote on independence for the Baltic republic, could determine whether Latvia follows Lithuania in a bid to break free from half a century of Soviet rule.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has warned Latvia and the third Baltic republic of Estonia that if they move rapidly to secede, they will face the same tough economic measures he has imposed in Lithuania.