Gorbachev Asks West to Help New Democracy

Warning that global stability is at risk if his reforms fail, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev appealed to the West on Tuesday for aid to cement the building of a “great Eurasian democracy.”

In his first address to an international forum after three tumultuous weeks that have reshaped the map of Europe and the future of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev praised Western leaders for rushing to his side “at a crucial moment”--last month’s aborted coup against him.

The coup’s failure proved that democracy has taken root during his six-year leadership, Gorbachev insisted, skillfully turning the political disaster to his advantage. He described the whirlwind of events since the putsch as a “purifying thunderstorm.”

“What followed corresponds to my deepest convictions and intentions,” a confident Gorbachev told a human rights gathering of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. “The main lesson we have drawn from the August events is that we should proceed along the way of democratic reforms toward the new union and market economy faster and more resolutely.”

Even as Gorbachev expressed fears of nationalist regimes rising from communism’s ashes, ethnic and political clashes flared in the southern Caucasus Mountains.

Thousands of demonstrators barricaded the main street of Tbilisi, the capital of Soviet Georgia, to protect the headquarters of the main opposition party against threats of attack by the republic’s militant nationalist president.

Fighting also continued between ethnic Georgians and the Muslim population of South Ossetia.

And Azerbaijanis and Armenians kept up their four-year battle over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Gorbachev put the blame for the escalating unrest on economic hardship that threatens to worsen as Soviets head into a winter of food and energy shortages.

“If Europe does not want to face a torrent of refugees from armed conflicts, inter-ethnic hatred, killings and burned homes, then it must pay very close attention to the guarantees for human rights provided by all states on its territory,” Gorbachev told delegates from 38 nations, including the newly sovereign states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

“We need assistance, cooperation, solidarity,” he said. “We are counting on it.”

He reminded his listeners from the seven largest industrial democracies that he appealed to them in July for assistance to accelerate Soviet reform. The leaders of the so-called Group of Seven countries gave token support but made clear that economic restructuring of the Soviet Union had far to go before massive investment would pour in.

“I sincerely hope the West will now consider with greater attention what I have said so many times. . . ,” Gorbachev said. “There are now conditions for more speedy and resolute implementation of the G-7 agreements, for assisting the republics and the union to restore the economy.”

Western aid is essential, he said, because “we are talking about the country with which the progress and the fate of the whole world are linked.”

British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said after Gorbachev’s speech that the European Community plans to ship food to the Soviet Union to stave off famine this winter. But he predicted there would be no stampede of investment.

“The West will pay very strong attention to the reports and analysis of Western financial institutions such as the (International Monetary Fund),” Hurd told reporters. He noted, however, that since the coup, the Soviet leadership’s commitment to reform had become clearer and the need for support more urgent.

Gorbachev also used his address on human rights issues to promote his proposal for reforming and reshaping the structure of the Soviet Union.

After the coup attempt, Gorbachev disbanded the Soviet Council of Ministers for its complicity and resigned as head of the party. Since then, 11 of the 15 Soviet republics have declared independence from the union, and the Kremlin has recognized the statehood of the three Baltic nations.

An emergency session of the Congress of People’s Deputies last week named a transitional leadership, the State Council, to oversee the fractured federation until each republic decides whether to join Gorbachev’s proposed new “union of sovereign states.”

“The new union should be founded on the principles of independence and territorial integrity, both its own and its constituent parts,” he said. He contended that freedom should not be misused to sever “historic ties.”

“The great Eurasian democracy will become one of the foundations of a new world, its security, the convergence of the two continents with precisely this goal in view,” he asserted.

Gorbachev said a common armed forces would guarantee effective control over the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons and future disarmament.

“Demilitarization is directly related to human rights,” Gorbachev said. Amassing arms “not only drains the economy and ecology, it drains the human condition physically and spiritually.”

While acknowledging that he was partly to blame for the coup attempt, Gorbachev said its failure showed that his program of democratic reforms is working.

“In spite of a great deal of criticism, perestroika has done a great deal in the last six years,” Gorbachev said. The putsch failed, he said, because “the people wanted law and order, but not through dictators and emergency acts.”

Praising the international community for supporting him during the botched coup, Gorbachev said the West’s solidarity shows that the Soviet Union has already been accepted as “part of the democratic world.”

While Gorbachev was pressing for economic aid to ensure the development of democracy, an armed standoff escalated in Georgia between forces for and against the republic’s nationalist president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

The 15,000-strong Georgian national guard has split into two relatively even forces, one loyal to Gamsakhurdia and the other siding with police commanders who accuse the president of having supported the abortive Kremlin coup, according to Valeria Polyakova, a reporter with the Gruzinform news agency in Tbilisi.

Soviet television showed Gamsakhurdia opponents piling bricks and concrete debris to block the capital’s main street, Rustaveli Prospekt. Protesters feared the president’s forces would attack the opposition National Independence Party headquarters or party leader Irakli Tsereteli, who has been harshly critical of Gamsakhurdia.

A spokeswoman for Gamsakhurdia, Magun Gagnidze, contended the demonstrators were amassed in support of the republic leader, who has demanded recognition of Georgian independence by the “devil machine of the Kremlin.”

Gamsakhurdia also issued a new press law requiring registration of media in the republic and accused some publications of “openly slanderous” reporting.

The official news agency Tass reported a “sharp aggravation” of tensions in South Ossetia, an autonomous region of Georgia bordering on the Russian Federation.

The Muslim South Ossetians claim they are persecuted by the Christian Georgian minority. They have been seeking to join Russia’s North Ossetia to escape what they fear will be worse discrimination in an independent Georgia.

Clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh claimed at least 13 lives over the weekend, and sporadic gunfire and mortar blasts have continued over the past two days, the Assa-Irada news agency reported from Baku, the Azerbaijani capital.

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Here’s what happened Tuesday in the Soviet Union:

* HUMAN DIMENSION: President Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened the first human rights conference ever held in the Soviet Union by pledging to guarantee individual freedoms and thanking Western nations for their support. Shortly before the session began, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe voted to admit as members Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

* U.N. VOTE: The Security Council will vote Thursday to admit the three Baltic states to the U.N., 51 years after they were annexed by the Soviet Union. The council set a formal meeting after referring the republics’ admission request to its membership committee.

* DEFENSE TALKS: New Soviet Defense Minister Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov began talks with representatives of the Baltics and 12 Soviet republics after moves by many of them to create their own armies and undermine central military authority.

Source: Times Wire Services