Moscow Easing Its Blockade, Premier of Lithuania Says : Secession: But ending of all sanctions apparently depends on the republic’s suspending its independence declaration, at least during negotiations.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene said after meeting with Kremlin leaders here on Wednesday that the Soviet government is relaxing its two-month economic blockade of the Baltic republic, a step she said should lead to negotiations on its independence.

Prunskiene said Soviet officials agreed to supply more natural gas and some raw materials to Lithuania and to consider increasing fuel supplies for agriculture in an effort to get negotiations under way between Moscow and the secessionist republic.

“From these talks, we understood the Soviet government has begun to trust us more, and we now trust it more,” Prunskiene said after meeting with Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov and Anatoly I. Lukyanov, the chairman of the Congress of People’s Deputies, the country’s Parliament.

Speaking with the official Soviet news agency Tass, Prunskiene said she was told the full blockade will be lifted as progress is made in political negotiations between Lithuania and the central government.

“There are no doubts about the lifting of the economic blockade,” Prunskiene told Tass. “This was stated quite explicitly.”

But the resumption of oil supplies and the lifting of other economic sanctions imposed in April still apparently depend on the Lithuanian Parliament’s willingness to suspend its declaration of independence, at least during the negotiations.

Prunskiene, returning to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, told Radio Moscow’s Interfax news service that her government “should very carefully discuss the question of freezing for the duration of possible negotiations with the Soviet Union the act of independence.”

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has continued to insist that Lithuania suspend its March 11 declaration of independence as a condition for talks on the republic’s secession. Until Prunskiene’s meeting Wednesday with Ryzhkov, Lithuanian leaders had only offered to suspend the laws passed to implement the declaration.

“The suspension would cover the period of talks only, and that would be limited,” Prunskiene said, adding that she will now try to win acceptance of this condition in Lithuania as the way to promote full-scale negotiations with Moscow. She has scheduled a special meeting of her Cabinet for Saturday to discuss the Soviet proposals.

Vytautas Landsbergis, the Lithuanian president, also urged compromise as he reported on his meeting here with Gorbachev for an hour and a quarter on Tuesday in the company of the presidents of neighboring Estonia and Latvia, Arnold Ruutel and Anatolijs Gorbunovs.

“This is a moment when things should be done from both sides so that it does not look like the capitulation of one of them,” Landsbergis told the Lithuanian Parliament.

“A clear desire is present to resolve the problem, not by forcing us to submit but by finding a mutually acceptable solution.”

Landsbergis said Lithuania should consider “certain maneuvers” that would permit Gorbachev to begin negotiations on Lithuanian independence.

“It might be possible to find a way out of today’s situation so that a true political dialogue could begin between Lithuania and the Soviet Union with a simultaneous ending of the blockade,” he added, saying that “the sincere and constructive spirit of the discussion gives hope.”

The central government cut off Lithuania’s entire oil supply, most of its natural gas and the majority of raw material to force the republic to rescind its declaration of independence. The punishing embargo has closed most factories, putting more than 26,000 people out of work, and is beginning to affect agriculture, a mainstay of the Lithuanian economy.

The renewed deliveries will permit a major fertilizer plant and a number of other key factories to resume production, Lithuanian officials said Wednesday.

Gorbachev and Ryzhkov told the three Baltic leaders Tuesday that the central government is ready for negotiations that would lead to full independence for their small republics, but they urged--with some success--that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania at least consider continued membership in a greatly changed Soviet federation.

The three Baltic republics were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 in a deal with Nazi Germany after two decades of independence. Lithuania has led the way in its efforts to regain its independence, but Estonia and Latvia are now following closely behind.

While acknowledging that the Baltic states are likely to secede, Gorbachev has a “vision of a union of sovereign socialist states,” Arkady A. Maslennikov, the president’s press secretary, told journalists at a Kremlin briefing Wednesday, and he is intent on reaching a compromise with the Baltic states as a first step in this process.

Gorbachev sees a new confederation replacing the Soviet Union, with each constituent republic sovereign and with each having a different relationship with the central government.

The new Federal Council, made up of the presidents of the 15 republics and central government officials under Gorbachev’s chairmanship, met for five hours Tuesday and set up a working group to draft alternative constitutions for such a confederation.

In dealing with the Baltic issue, Gorbachev took “a gigantic step forward to offer an olive branch to the Lithuanians,” Maslennikov said. “The president does not intend to insist on a degrading formula. He is speaking about the search for political solutions acceptable to all sides.”

Ryzhkov also said that significant progress has been made in this week’s talks and that, if there were a positive Lithuanian response to the central government’s proposal, there could be rapid progress.

“We are beginning to move toward a solution,” the prime minister told journalists during a break in the proceedings of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s national legislature. “People are starting to understand that by choosing that path, they went into a dead end and they don’t know how to get out. Now, it appears to me that they see this. . . .

“If our proposal is accepted, we will sit at the negotiating table and decide on how to settle our relations. . . . But it is up to them to decide. We have covered our part of the way.”