Lithuania Loosens Moscow Ties, Will Negotiate Economic Pacts

The Soviet Union and Lithuania, in a major shift in their relationship, agreed Tuesday that their future economic ties will be based on negotiated contracts instead of plans dictated by Moscow.

“We emphasized that our economic relations, starting next year, should be bilateral,” Lithuanian Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene told a news conference after preliminary talks on Lithuanian independence with Kremlin officials. “This is an essential change.”

Under the agreement, Lithuania’s economy will no longer be controlled by Moscow on the basis of national economic plans, but the republic will have to negotiate contracts for what it buys from the central government and what it sells in return.

“The first step has been made,” Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis said after four hours of talks with Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov. “It was a major step, and we did not trip.”

The Soviet and Lithuanian delegations will meet again in two weeks, Prunskiene said, and probably decide at that time when actual independence negotiations will begin.

Lithuania declared its independence March 11 but agreed to suspend the declaration in late June after a crippling economic blockade by Moscow. The Kremlin, in turn, resumed shipments of fuel, raw materials and consumer goods to Lithuania and promised to open negotiations on independence.

Lithuanian leaders said Tuesday that they plan to work with the Kremlin so that their people will not suffer as they did last spring.

“We had a taste of that independence--bitter independence--during the economic blockade,” Prunskiene said. “This is a price we have already paid and we hope it was enough.”

The Lithuanians told Ryzhkov that the republic does not intend to stay in the Soviet Union nor sign a new union treaty between the republics that is under discussion.

“What is the Soviet Union, anyway?” Prunskiene asked. “The weakening center or the republics that are striving to become independent?”

The other two Baltic republics, Latvia and Estonia, are also pursuing independence negotiations with the Kremlin, but they, too, have not opened formal talks.

During a meeting with Latvian leaders here last week, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said that in the future, republics will have independence in their economic affairs and in foreign trade, the Estonian News Service reported.