U.S. Has Offered Support, Lithuanian President Says : Diplomacy: Tense standoff in the Baltic republic continues. White House spokesman reports that summit with Gorbachev is still on.

President Vytautas Landsbergis said Friday he had received U.S. assurance of support for his Baltic republic, which is trying to buck a crackdown by Soviet troops.

In Washington, President Bush told a news conference he had spoken with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and called for a peaceful solution in the Baltics.

The Soviet actions in Lithuania had prompted the Administration to reconsider a planned summit meeting between President Bush and Gorbachev in Moscow Feb. 11-13. But Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, said after Bush and Gorbachev discussed developments in the Persian Gulf on the telephone Friday that “the summit is still on.”

A tense standoff continued in the Baltic republic Friday, five days after the brutal military action last Sunday that was aimed at quelling an independence drive that began last spring.

Soviet soldiers patrolled Vilnius and the Baltic republic’s next four largest cities, manning checkpoints at all main roads into them, stopping cars and checking identification documents of drivers and pedestrians.

The Lithuanian government cited reports from numerous citizens complaining of mistreatment by soldiers. A deputy in the Lithuanian Parliament, Vidmantas Povilionis, said troops dragged him from his car late Thursday and detained him for 2 1/2 hours.

The Lithuanian Legislature in Vilnius was surrounded by cement barricades and Lithuanian volunteers intent on stopping a military takeover of the building. Parliament spokesman Haris Subicius said fighters with shotguns, machine guns and firebombs were on the roof of a nearby parking garage.

In the Baltic republic of Estonia, residents of the capital, Tallinn, blocked roads to the hilltop Parliament building with stone barricades. Russian-speaking workers pressing the Estonian government to resign went on strike at 16 large factories, a news report said.

Soviet forces have seized several key buildings in Lithuania, which declared independence in March. Fourteen people were killed in a Soviet military assault on the Lithuanian broadcast center early Sunday.

At an evening news conference Friday, Landsbergis said he had met with George A. Krol, the U.S. consul based in Leningrad. He quoted Krol as telling him: “The United States guarantees that at this time in our crisis, the United States is on our side.”

The U.S. diplomat told him the United States supports a peaceful settlement in Lithuania, Landsbergis said. No independent confirmation from Krol on the comments was immediately available.

In his remarks to reporters, Bush said he had discussed the situation in the Baltics with Gorbachev by telephone.

“I took the opportunity . . . from that call to express again my concern, my deep concern over the Baltics, and the need to ensure that there is a peaceful resolution to the situation there,” Bush said.

U.S. officials also unleased a barrage of criticism at the Soviet media Friday, saying tension in Lithuania had been unnecessarily heightened by biased reporting.

Their coverage “has done a great disservice to the Soviet people and has served to exacerbate an already difficult situation,” one official said.

The officials cited as an example Soviet reports that Lithuanians guarding the television tower in Vilnius fired first on the Soviet troops. Witnesses, including an Associated Press reporter, contradicted those reports.

In Brussels, Belgium, Lithuania’s foreign minister on Friday said Western nations are just “talking about democracy” while letting the Soviet government victimize his Baltic republic. Foreign Minister Algirdas Saudargas made the charge while speaking to members of the European Parliament.

In his comments, Landsbergis also said he met once more with a personal representative of Gorbachev, Georgy Tarazevich.

“I can tell you truly that Mr. Tarazevich is not impressed, is not happy, with what he has seen here of what the military is doing,” Landsbergis said.