Gorbachev May Govern Lithuania : Baltic unrest: He threatens to impose direct ‘presidential rule.’ The republic’s leaders say the move brings region closer to civil conflict.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev warned Lithuania on Thursday that he would impose direct rule there, removing the breakaway republic’s government, unless it restores Soviet power and complies with national laws.

Gorbachev, who sent paratroopers to Lithuania earlier this week to round up draft evaders and military deserters in a show of strength, said that he is under mounting pressure to place the republic under “presidential rule,” under which he would govern, using troops if necessary.

“People demand the restoration of constitutional order, reliable guarantees of security and normal living conditions,” Gorbachev told the Lithuanian Parliament in a telegram. “Having lost their faith in the policy pursued by the present leadership, they demand the introduction of presidential rule.”

Lithuanian leaders rejected Gorbachev’s warning as “a new and dangerous step” that brings the republic and perhaps the whole Baltic region closer to civil conflict.

President Vytautas Landsbergis, calling Gorbachev’s appeal an “ultimatum,” said the imposition of presidential rule in Lithuania would be “a gross international injustice and a violation of even the pretense at democracy in the Soviet Union.”

“Presidential rule is a term meant to mislead the world public,” Landsbergis said. “It is an occupation executed by the president of a foreign country--that is the same ‘presidential rule’ as in (Iraqi-occupied) Kuwait.”

Kazimiera Prunskiene, Lithuania’s outgoing prime minister, said she does not believe that Gorbachev wants to impose presidential rule, which would involve removing Lithuania’s elected nationalist government and then administering the republic with central government officials or military officers.

But Prunskiene said that the Soviet president, who has sweeping powers under the constitution and additional legislation, had been adamant on the need to uphold the Soviet constitution and enforce national laws in the republic when they met in Moscow earlier this week.

“Gorbachev told me, ‘Go back and restore order so that I do not have to do it myself,’ ” she said.

Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union on March 11 after the victory of nationalists in the republic’s first free elections in more than 50 years. It has yet to negotiate terms for its secession, however, and Gorbachev appears determined to maintain the Soviet Union’s integrity as a state.

“The situation is virtually reaching a dead-end,” Gorbachev said in his message. “The need to get out of this calls for immediate measures.”

Landsbergis again accused the Soviet government of plotting to overthrow his government, using Russian and Polish workers in the republic, the pro-Moscow faction of the Communist Party and the reinforced military garrisons there.

“An action of this kind would trigger violence,” he told a press conference in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, “and we are getting close, very close.”

Kazimieras Motieka, the republic’s vice president, declared on Lithuanian radio: “It appears that the hour has come when we all have to decide the most important question to Lithuania--either independence or eternal slavery.”

In neighboring Latvia, President Anatolijs Gorbunovs shared the Lithuanians’ fears. “If Gorbachev continues his current policy in the Baltic states, it is geared for only one purpose--introducing presidential rule,” Gorbunovs told a press conference in Riga, the Latvian capital.

Mavriks Vulfson, a member of the Latvian Parliament, which this week expressed concern about moves by the Kremlin against it, said: “This means the end of the republic, of independent Lithuania. It is not yet presidential rule, but it is the brink.

“Perhaps the center would like to impose presidential rule in one republic to scare the others,” Vulfson added.

Gorbachev described Lithuania as in a worsening crisis caused by “gross breaches of . . . the Soviet constitution and the constitution of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, the infringement of the political and social rights of citizens and a desire under slogans of democracy to pursue a policy aimed at restoring the bourgeois system.”

Gorbachev’s declaration brought an estimated 10,000 nationalist supporters into the square outside the Parliament building, and about 3,000 pro-Moscow demonstrators gathered for the third day in a rival protest.

Lithuanian authorities again expressed concern that the demonstrations might lead to violence, which would then be used to mask a coup. Both sides are now busing supporters into central Vilnius for the rallies, and another is scheduled for today.

Workers at the Vilnius airport, the city’s railway station, a major electronics plant and construction company began a strike to demand the replacement of the nationalist government with presidential rule.

“The most reactionary and aggressive forces of the Soviet empire are attacking us and continuing the crime committed in 1940,” Motieka said, referring to Lithuania’s absorption into the Soviet Union under a pact with Nazi Germany--with the purported approval of the Lithuanian parliament of the time.

Armored cars and military trucks filled with troops rolled through the capital’s streets Thursday evening, adding to the tension.

Audrius Butkevicius, the director-general of Lithuania’s national security department, said that the military activities were calculated to raise tensions to justify further action by the central government.

The Supreme Council, the republic’s Parliament, elected Albertas Simenas, 40, a research economist, as the new prime minister Thursday evening to replace Prunskiene. She resigned this week after lawmakers overturned her government’s increase in food prices and criticized her moderate approach to negotiations with Moscow on independence. Simenas is a strong Landsbergis supporter.

BACKGROUND

Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to proclaim independence, in March, 1990. In retaliation, the Kremlin shut off oil and gasoline shipments. After two months, Lithuania backed off and agreed to suspend its independence declaration, pending talks. But the issue was never resolved. By the end of 1990, all the Soviet republics had followed suit and declared various forms of sovereignty, imperiling the national union.