Baltic-Americans Plan Human Blockade of Gorbachev : Protests: They intend to trail him on his U.S. tour. They also want to reproach Bush for his stance on freedom-seeking republics.

Thousands of Baltic-Americans, distressed by what they consider U.S. appeasement of Moscow’s repression of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, are planning coast-to-coast demonstrations during Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s visit to the United States.

“We will put a human blockade around Gorbachev as he goes around this country to remind him of the economic blockade of Lithuania,” Jonas Bobelis, public relations director of the Supreme Committee for Liberation of Lithuania, told a news conference Friday. “We will continue to follow him throughout his stay. We hope to have about 10,000 people on the streets in Washington.”

Even if the crowd is only a tenth of that, Gorbachev appears likely to face a fiercer protest in the United States than he has on any of his previous foreign trips.

The Joint Baltic American National Committee, an umbrella organization representing Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, is planning demonstrations in Washington, Minneapolis and the San Francisco Bay area.

Organizers said that they have separate objectives tailored for distinct audiences: to win the support of American public opinion, to shame the Bush Administration and to embarrass Gorbachev.

Spokesmen for a dozen Baltic organizations complained at a Washington news conference that the Administration has done too little to support Baltic independence. They said the U.S. restraint appears to reflect Bush’s reluctance to offend Gorbachev or to upset political and economic reforms in the rest of the Soviet Union.

“Appeasement of Gorbachev on the Baltic issue is both a strategic and political mistake,” said Gunars Meierovics, president of the World Federation of Free Latvians. The Baltic independence movements, he said, “will outlast Gorbachev and outlast the Soviet Union.”

Participants in a demonstration scheduled for next Friday in front of the San Francisco federal building have been asked to bring tightly rolled black umbrellas, a reminder of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler at Munich in 1938.

The Baltic demonstrations have taken the spotlight away from the Jewish groups demanding free emigration for Soviet Jewry. When Gorbachev was last in Washington for his meeting with President Ronald Reagan in 1987, he faced protests against his emigration policy, although they were smaller than the events scheduled by the Balts.

The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews announced that it will protest the failure of the Soviet Parliament to pass legislation to codify the relaxed rules that have led to a dramatic increase in the number of Soviet Jews allowed to leave the country.

A council official said that hundreds of Soviet Jews have been denied permission to leave. However, much of the emotion has been drained from the issue because more than 70,000 Jews were allowed to emigrate last year. The number is expected to be much higher this year.

The Baltic demonstrations are scheduled to begin in Washington on Monday, two days before Gorbachev’s arrival. With participants bused in from Milwaukee, Kansas City, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York, Boston and other cities, Baltic-Americans will rally in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House.

As the Bush-Gorbachev talks get under way in Washington, a group of Lithuanian-American war veterans will hold a vigil in front of the White House on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

On Friday and Saturday, the Lithuanian-American community plans to sponsor demonstrations at the Capitol.

When Gorbachev reaches Minneapolis on June 3, Midwestern Balts plan to demonstrate as close as they can get to the Soviet president.

In addition to next Friday’s demonstration in San Francisco, Baltic-Americans plan a rally June 3 at the Justin Herman Plaza. The following day, there will be another demonstration on the Stanford University campus to coincide with Gorbachev’s stop there.

Also in San Francisco, the Armenian National Committee is planning a series of demonstrations June 3 and 4 to protest violence against Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave of Soviet Azerbaijan.