Conference Greets New Dawn of Rights : Europe: Moscow session applauds Gorbachev’s renewed commitment. Some call for tough new measures.

Senior representatives from 38 nations, applauding Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s renewed commitment to human rights, Tuesday declared the dawn of a new European era in which such basic rights are suddenly no longer a dream but have won the support of all the Continent’s nations.

“As if by a miracle, we are at a point where virtually all (European) governments accept the principles of the Paris Charter (on human rights) and are working to achieve them,” British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd told the opening session of a major human rights conference here.

Others called for tough new measures, including the dispatch of human rights monitors, to prevent any erosion of the newly won gains.

The high point of the inaugural session of the Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was clearly Gorbachev’s appearance, his first before an international gathering since he survived August’s attempted coup against him.

For the Soviet leader, it was a personal triumph that helped answer the question on the minds of many of those who came to Moscow wondering if Gorbachev’s real power had gone.

Buoyed by the sweeping scale of recent events, delegates representing all European countries plus the United States and Canada received Gorbachev as the individual who, more than any other, made the human rights achievements possible.

After an aggressive 30-minute speech in the city’s sumptuous Hall of Columns in the House of Unions across from Red Square, Gorbachev received a long, standing ovation from an audience that included all of the Continent’s 36 foreign ministers.

“Without him, without the movement of renewal in his country and without his resourceful action . . . the historic chance to move from an era of confrontation to the fabulous explosion of liberties that we now see wouldn’t have been possible,” French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas commented of Gorbachev.

Adding a touch of irony to the occasion, the tributes for the man who swept communism from the map of Europe occurred in the very room where the body of V. I. Lenin once laid in state.

At a reception Tuesday night in the Kremlin, Gorbachev spent more than an hour meeting with the various foreign ministers, taking care to chat at length with each one individually.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III arrived late Tuesday and is expected to meet with Gorbachev and address the conference today.

Earlier Tuesday, the foreign ministers voted unanimously to admit the three newly independent Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. By the time Gorbachev took the podium, Estonia’s delegation had been seated between those of Spain and Finland, while Lichtenstein was flanked by the representatives of Latvia and Lithuania.

The three Baltic states were also visible in the motorcade of foreign ministers moving toward the Kremlin reception Tuesday night. Tucked into the line of imposing black Zil limousines were three more modest Volga sedans, each proudly flying the national flag of a newly free republic.

Although the foreign ministers lauded recent human rights successes, they also warned that new measures are required to protect these gains against emerging nationalist passions.

They pointed to the protracted crisis in Yugoslavia, where ethnic tensions between Serbs and Croats are rapidly driving the country toward full-scale civil war, and reports of repression in the southern Soviet republic of Georgia.

“Ethnic and national passions, once let loose, can threaten the new order,” said Barbara Jean McDougall, Canada’s secretary of state for external affairs. “That’s happening already.”

German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher urged a series of measures, including the deployment of CSCE observers to monitor conflicts in member countries, “even without the agreement of the country concerned.” German officials said political and economic sanctions could follow to punish leaders who attempted to achieve their goals by non-peaceful means.

For many of those attending the meeting, the crisis in Yugoslavia is increasingly viewed as a test of the Continent’s commitment to human rights and peaceful resolution of conflict.

“It is important to show (Serbian President Slobodan) Milosevic that acquisition of land by force is not something the European Community or the world will accept,” Hurd told reporters after his formal remarks.

He also noted that, despite the progress on human rights in the Soviet Union, some individuals are still denied exit visas.

Outside the House of Unions, one person held a handpainted sign declaring: “Bush Give Me Liberty.” He claimed he had been refused permission by Soviet authorities to return to Hungary, which he said he had left 45 years ago.

“I want to go home,” said the man, who identified himself as Mihaly Tuzany. “They won’t let me go.”

Hall of Columns Makes History Again

To hold a human rights conference in Moscow is certainly a historic event, but the Hall of Columns in the House of Unions is an old hand at making history:

* The building, a masterpiece of Russian classicism, was bought by Moscow’s noblemen in 1784 and became the Club of the Nobility.

* The Hall of Columns was the club’s ballroom.

* The building was turned over to the trade unions in 1917 and is now used as a convention center and a concert hall.

* In the Hall of Columns, the bodies of V. I. Lenin, Josef Stalin and other top Communist dignitaries lay in state before their funerals.

* As part of the hall’s darker history, this is where the trial of Nikolai I. Bukharin was held in the Stalinist purges. He was executed in 1938.

* In the adjoining October Hall, the first major Stalin-era trial was held. The 16 alleged members of the “Trotskyite-Zinovievist Terrorist Center” were found guilty on Aug. 19, 1936, and shot the next morning. Gregory Y. Zinoviev and Lev B. Kamenev--old comrades of Lenin who had also ruled with Stalin--were among them. A Soviet court exonerated them in 1988.

Sources: Agence France-Presse, Blue Guide