Armenians Defy Gorbachev’s Decree on Surrendering Arms

Armenian lawmakers have voted to defy President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s decree that armed groups must turn in their weapons and disband, a local activist said Sunday.

Lawmakers Saturday gave preliminary approval to a resolution that would suspend Gorbachev’s decree on Armenian territory, as well as in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, according to a spokesman for the Armenian National Movement.

The measure will be discussed further at the legislative session today, said the spokesman in a telephone interview from Armenia’s capital of Yerevan.

The spokesman, who declined to give his name, said the lawmakers believe the presidential decree contradicts the Armenian constitution.

Gorbachev issued a decree Wednesday giving illegally armed militants across the country 15 days to turn in their weapons or risk having them confiscated by local police, officials of the republics or Interior Ministry troops.

Soviet Interior Minister Vadim V. Bakatin said Friday that if armed groups disobeyed the order, military force would be used. He referred specifically to armed groups in Armenia.

Besides Armenia, Bakatin said illegally armed groups also operate in Moldavia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Meanwhile, in the republic of Georgia, hundreds of protesters demanding immediate registration of political groups for multi-party elections were blocking trains at a railroad hub.

The protest, which began Thursday, has stranded 30 passenger trains and 90 freight trains laden with wheat, oil, sugar, meat and gasoline at the Samtredia railway junction of the trans-Caucasian railroad, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said.

The junction is about 125 miles northwest of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

The protesters--numbering about 700, according to the unofficial Postfactum news service--are demanding that the Georgian Parliament convene immediately to adopt a law to register groups for Oct. 28 elections.