Moscow to Open Negotiations on Baltics : Unrest: Gorbachev stops short of committing to self-rule for Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. Leaders of rebellious republics react coolly to the plan.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, attempting to break the bitter deadlock over independence for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, appointed delegations Friday to open negotiations with the Baltic republics on their future political and economic relationship with Moscow.

Gorbachev told a meeting of the Federation Council, the country’s highest policy-making body, that he hopes the talks will “begin immediately and proceed quickly to a good resolution of all outstanding issues,” according to officials present at the meeting.

Although he stopped short of committing himself to independence for the Baltic republics, Gorbachev made it clear, the officials said, that the “package of political, social and economic issues” on the agenda are the terms for their secession from the Soviet Union and the outline of their future relations with Moscow.

“The breakthrough, if it succeeds, will be conceptual, for the talks will proceed from our acceptance of their independence and only the ‘arrangements’ will be at issue,” a senior Soviet official commented. “The president’s clear intention is to end this crisis quickly, fairly and peacefully.”

But Baltic leaders reacted coolly, uncertain of the meaning of Gorbachev’s move.

“We must know what is hiding behind it, what is the political situation within the Soviet leadership,” Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis said in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.

Estonian Prime Minister Edgar Savisaar dismissed Gorbachev’s initiative as “rubbish” and not constructive. “The aim of these commissions will be to prolong the center’s (Moscow’s) control,” Sergei Chernov, Savisaar’s spokesman, said.

The move is “not the sign of goodwill from the Kremlin that we expected,” Landsbergis added. “But it seems that some talks and discussions will take place. Maybe there will be better prospects.”

Moscow opened preliminary discussions with Lithuania last summer, but the talks foundered almost immediately because Lithuania demanded recognition by the Kremlin of its March 11 declaration of independence as a condition for full talks.

Discussions between Moscow and Estonia did not even get that far, and those between Moscow and Latvia never began.

The Soviet delegations appointed by Gorbachev in a special decree are headed by deputy prime ministers and include top officials from the ministries of defense, interior and foreign affairs as well as the State Planning Commission.

The mood at the Federation Council meeting, as portrayed by Soviet officials, was conciliatory, reflecting a shared grief over the 21 people who died last month in Lithuania and Latvia in actions by Soviet security forces there.

“A tragedy has taken place and we are all very sympathetic,” Rafik Nishanov, chairman of one of the Soviet Legislature’s two chambers, told the official news agency Tass. “In future, both the use of force and anti-constitutional actions must be excluded. The situation can only be improved by patience, negotiations and mutual agreement.”

Nishanov called, however, for suspension of the Baltics’ “unconstitutional laws” during the talks--a demand that generally has infuriated Baltic leaders in the past because it negates their republics’ independence declarations and subsequent legislation.

But Ruslan Khasbulatov, vice president of the Russian Federation--the largest Soviet republic--and a supporter of the Baltics’ right to secede, said that he is encouraged by the meeting and hopes that negotiators “could overcome the distrust from events in the Baltics.”

Gorbachev, discussing the current draft of a “union treaty” that would lay down a new political basis for the country, said that it would rest on two key principles: The central government would have only those powers granted to it by the constituent republics, and the republics’ participation would be totally voluntary.

This formulation appeared to represent a significant softening of Gorbachev’s previous insistence on strong central powers, and most of the republican leaders at the Kremlin meeting reportedly declared their readiness for detailed negotiations on the draft union treaty.

Nikolai Dementei, the president of Byelorussia, said in a brief television interview that the treaty would allow the constituent republics, numbering 15 with the Baltics included, to limit the central government’s powers “based on the principle that the republics, as sovereign states, are united in the union only on a voluntary basis.”

“The authority of the central government is defined by the republics,” Dementei said. Until now, Gorbachev had been unwilling to accept this principle as a starting point for the treaty.

In return, however, the republics would agree to recognize the superiority of national over republic laws in defined areas.

Council members, who include the presidents and prime ministers of the constituent republics, leaders of smaller ethnic groups and a number of senior officials from the central government, agreed to send representatives to detailed talks on the draft treaty once there is agreement on the basic principles.

The country is scheduled to vote in a national referendum March 17 on whether to preserve the Soviet Union as “a renovated federation of equal sovereign republics.”