Renegade ‘Black Beret’ Troops Add Sparks to Latvia Tinderbox : Baltics: They were once local policemen. With emerging democracy they sided with the Kremlin and Communists and became outcasts.

Many of them had patrolled together for years as Latvia’s “boys in blue,” but two weeks ago they fired Kalashnikov automatic rifles at one another in a fierce 90-minute gun battle in central Riga.

Troops from the “black berets” sprayed the headquarters of the Latvian Interior Ministry and surrounding areas with rounds of automatic weapon fire, took over the building and shot dead two policemen.

The dramatic attack in downtown Riga, the capital of the Soviet Baltic republic of Latvia, also killed a television cameraman who was filming the battle and two passersby, according to official accounts.

Days after the furious shootout, local policemen were still stunned over the operation by the black berets, a highly-trained unit that was part of the police force until a few months ago.

“I’m still in shock,” Alexander Merkushev, 28, a policeman, said as he guarded the Parliament, wearing a bullet-proof vest and helmet. “These are the kids I used to work with. I don’t know what came over them. They were just normal guys.

“I can’t believe we ended up shooting one other.”

But Aloizs Vaznis, Latvia’s interior minister, said the attack on his ministry was a predictable next step for the rebel unit, which had recently shot and killed a bus driver, taken over official buildings by force and stolen a large cache of weapons from a police academy.

“It was no surprise to me,” Vaznis said. “They had already showed what kind of people they are.”

The black berets and the local policemen they battled were all part of the same police force. For years, they trained together, shared beats and were best friends.

As the political situation grew increasingly tense, however, they were compelled to choose sides. The police pledged their loyality to the Latvian Parliament and its goal of independence from the Soviet Union. But 120 black berets threw their support--and their guns--behind the Kremlin and the Communist Party.

The black berets’ choice made them outcasts as the Latvian Popular Front gained power in free elections here last year.

“Everything was fine until the Popular Front came to power,” said Slava Lashket, 46, the unit’s second-in-command, referring to the Latvian independence movement that dominates the Parliament.

Vaznis, the interior minister, threw the black berets off his force three months ago because they refused to heed his orders.

On paper, they are now subordinated to the Soviet Ministry of Interior’s Interior Troops, but they are rumored to take orders from Latvian Communist Party chief Alfreds Rubiks.

Local police said it seems no one controls the SWAT-like “special assignment police unit,” which is known by its Russian acronym of OMON.

“In my opinion they do not have any real boss right now,” Vaznis said. “They answer only to themselves.”

Policemen said the feud between Vaznis, who supports Latvia’s bid for independence, and the black berets, who are fervent Communists and profess loyalty to the Soviet Union, has been simmering since Vaznis took over as minister last spring.

When the minister tried to ban all political groups at the ministry, the black berets refused to stop their Communist Party meetings.

“We did not want to close our Communist Party group because ideology is very important,” Lashket said. “I think this is where our problems with the minister started.”

Although the unit officially split from the Latvian ministry in October, its commanders had been heading in that direction for months before.

“When Vaznis took the post, we decided we did not want to be subordinate to him,” said Lashket, an intimidating man with bulging muscles and a military-style haircut. “We don’t agree with a lot of what’s going on in Latvia.”

The rank and file also resent Vaznis.

“I think he’s done us wrong,” Tolik, 27, a black beret who refused to give his last name said as he guarded the unit’s headquarters, about 10 miles from downtown Riga. “He’s done everything possible to destroy us.”

But Igors Kupra, chief of the criminal department in the Latvian Interior Ministry, said the situation is complicated because about half of Latvia’s 3,000 policemen sympathized with the black berets before Sunday’s gunfight. How many still support them is not clear.

“I can’t say anything bad about OMON--they’re good guys,” Vladimir Shery, 23, a policeman, said a few days after the battle. “From my point of view, my leadership did not always deal with the OMON guys correctly. For instance, some of them wanted to rejoin our forces, but the minister wouldn’t let them.”

Since the latest attack, no one seems to want to be connected with the black berets, the mention of whom strikes fear into most citizens here.

Some taxi drivers refused to drive to the unit’s headquarters, which looks like a military base ready for an attack.

At the base, two guards wearing helmets and bullet-proof vests stand near a sandbagged bunker with their submachine guns ready. A third, wearing the trademark black beret and camouflage fatigues, stands at a gate of a tall barbed-wire fence. An armored personnel carrier is parked in front of a huge Quonset-like hut, which hides more vehicles.

Although the black berets have been ordered not to leave their base, several men dressed in camouflage fatigues and wearing black berets drove up to the base in a police jeep. One was leaning out the back and waving his Kalashnikov menacingly.

Inside their flimsy barracks, the black berets never seemed to be separated from their weapons. One young recruit had his Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder and his pistol in its holster while he stirred his rations on a grimy stove.

Created in 1988 as a nationwide anti-crime unit, the black berets recruited volunteers from local police forces, most of whom were just average or below average cops, physically and mentally, Kupra, of the Interior Ministry, said. They were given special training in marksmanship and the use of sophisticated weapons and learned karate and other martial arts.

“They were a very good group,” Kupra said. “They worked with me often, and I was very satisfied with their work. They are very reliable.”

When the conflicts with the ministry started, OMON opened a business called Viking and started offering its services for money, Kupra said, and the Communist Party was its best customer.

Lashket denied reports, however, that his unit takes orders from Communist Party bosses.

Lashket also tells a totally different version of last week’s shootout. He and some colleagues were driving by the Interior Ministry on Sunday evening, minding their own business, when policemen approached and started shooting. Then shots came from all sides.

“The ministry started an attack,” Lashket said. “We thought maybe criminals dressed like police had taken over the building.”

After hearing Lashket’s version, Vaznis said: “It’s such a flagrant lie that it’s impossible even to comment on it.”

Soviet Interior Minister Boris Pugo, who formerly headed the Latvian KGB security police and then its Communist Party, has pledged to keep the black berets on their base and remove all the arms they’ve seized, including machine guns and grenade throwers.

But there are still reports of heavily armed black berets driving around the city.

“We have a very nervous situation here,” Kupra said. “There can still be a great deal more calamity, and because they are so heavily armed that calamity will be the loss of more human lives.”