Lithuanians Now Expect Bolder Turn in U.S. Policy : Baltic: Landsbergis says Bush suggested independence vote and he should issue a stern warning to Moscow.

Boosted by a landslide victory at the polls, Lithuania’s president on Monday called on the United States to warn Moscow to keep its hands off Lithuania in the future.

Vytautas Landsbergis also disclosed that it was President Bush who, during their White House meeting last December, suggested the holding of a republic-wide vote akin to last Saturday’s referendum “as a way of expressing the nation’s will.”

Now that Bush has seen the resounding pro-independence results of a measure he himself endorsed, Landsbergis told reporters, the beleaguered Vilnius government has a right to expect a much bolder turn in U.S. policy.

“I’m speaking about political protection (for Lithuania),” Landsbergis said when pressed. “This will be a final, clear position that the Soviet Union has no right whatsoever over Lithuania, its people and its territory.”

Any further intervention by the central Soviet government should be treated as a breach of international law and a “further violation continuing the crime of 1940,” the year Lithuania and its Baltic neighbors, Estonia and Latvia, were forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union, Landsbergis said.

The Bush Administration has professed shock and dismay at Soviet army actions here last month that caused the deaths of 13 unarmed civilians, but Bush has since voiced unswerving support for Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and for Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms.

“I asked for political help and political protection for Lithuania when I met with President Bush at the end of last year,” Landsbergis said. “It is possible that the American leadership was not aware then of the danger to Lithuania. Now they can see it.”

Displaying his realism, Landsbergis did not foresee the possibility of quick U.S. diplomatic recognition of his government. The Kremlin has rejected independent proclamations issued by the Parliament last March as unconstitutional and hence void.

At a special parliamentary session convened to capitalize on the referendum’s results, Lithuania’s Supreme Council called on European countries, the United States and Canada to support the republic “in its struggle for freedom and democracy” and suggested holding an international conference on the Baltic state.

The lawmakers, voting 116 to 0, also declared that the phrasing approved by the overwhelming majority of voters two days earlier--that “the state of Lithuania is an independent democratic republic”--would become part of a new constitution and “a fundamental principle of the state.”

The only deputy to abstain on that vote was Sergei Piroshkov, an ethnic Russian and a member of the hard-line pro-Moscow Communist Party, which vehemently opposes the idea of Lithuania’s breaking away from the Soviet Union.

To further press their case with the Americans, Lithuanian officials were keenly awaiting the Wednesday arrival of a 13-member congressional delegation that is on a three-day fact-finding mission to investigate Soviet conduct in the Baltic republic.

The delegation, which includes Reps. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) and Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), will hold talks with Landsbergis and meet with people still hospitalized with wounds suffered in the Jan. 13 storming of the Vilnius broadcasting facility by Soviet troops.

The Bush Administration has approved a sizable shipment of medical supplies and aid to treat civilians hit in that clash, and health officials are especially impatient to meet with U.S. lawmakers to discuss the shipment.

Also Monday, official election returns were made public by the State Electoral Commission, confirming the magnitude of the popular mandate for independence expressed over the weekend.

According to the commission, 84.5% of the republic’s voters took part in Saturday’s balloting, with 2,028,339 people, or almost 90.5% of those who turned out, voting in favor of independence.