Latvian Leader Predicts Victory in Independence Referendum

Latvian President Anatoljs Gorbunovs predicted Saturday that a vote held in defiance of Moscow would reaffirm the Baltic republic’s desire for independence and help garner Western support.

Voters in Latvia and the neighboring Baltic republic of Estonia were to cast ballots today in independence plebiscites staged to counter a scheduled March 17 Soviet referendum demanded by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“Tomorrow a majority of our population will vote in support of a democratic republic because it corresponds to their real wish to restore this independent and democratic state,” Gorbunovs said Saturday. “People of all nationalities living in Latvia must understand that only an independent and democratic state created by us can secure national consensus.”

The maverick polls today will ask residents of the two Baltic republics to affirm or oppose declarations of independence passed last year by nationalist-controlled parliaments in Riga and Tallinn.

“This is prompted by Gorbachev’s referendum,” Estonian government spokesman Tarmu Tannerk said in Tallinn. “Gorbachev announced his referendum, and the three Baltic states thought it wise to hold their own votes to preempt Gorbachev’s referendum.”

The Soviet Parliament last week decreed that the local plebiscites in Latvia and Estonia, following a similar one last month in neighboring Lithuania, cannot replace the March 17 nationwide poll.

While the Baltic plebiscites asked whether voters support “independent and democratic” statehood, the national referendum asks whether the Soviet Union should be kept together as a “renewed federation” of nominally sovereign republics.

Gorbunovs, speaking on his return from a weeklong session of the Nordic Council in Copenhagen, said the West was looking at the plebiscites to validate the Baltic republics’ desire for independence.