Soviet Paratroopers Sent to Baltic Region : Europe: Moscow orders thousands of soldiers into Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to enforce the draft.

Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov ordered tens of thousands of paratroopers to the breakaway Baltic region to enforce the draft, officials in Baltic republics said today.

Lithuania’s top representative to the United States said he feared the action was an attempt by Moscow to provoke bloody clashes.

The Baltic military district’s commander phoned Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis to tell him several divisions were being flown to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, said a statement from Latvia’s Parliament.

The Defense Ministry in Moscow said it could not comment on the report. Baltic commander Fyodor Kuzmin told Godmanis that “several divisions of USSR Army paratroopers were being flown into the Baltics, in order to ensure the military draft in the Baltics,” according to Parliament’s statement. “One division consists of 10,000 soldiers.”

The president of neighboring Lithuania, Vytautas Landsbergis, received similar information, said a statement from that republic’s Parliament.

“In accordance with orders issued by Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, conscription of youths by force into the Soviet army is beginning in Lithuania,” the Lithuanian statement said. “A special division of paratroopers will be used to execute this order.”

Soviet television reported that more than a division of additional paratroops would be flown in to all three republics.

The latest development in the Baltics came amid high tension between Moscow and the three republics, which have all declared their intention to secede from the Soviet Union.

“To us it seems a very clear provocation and desire to provoke even bloody clashes because the Red Army doesn’t need young men right now,” said Stasys Lozoraitis, Lithuania’s top representative to the United States. He said Lithuanian officials were urging young people to remain calm and avoid violence.

There are already about 100,000 Soviet soldiers in Latvia alone.

Nationalists in all three republics, which were independent between the two world wars, have called on young people not to answer the military callup.

Only 24.7% of conscripts in the republic have responded to the callup, the army chief of staff, Gen. Mikhail Moiseyev, said in an interview.