Gorbachev Cancels Meetings; Financial Markets Unsettled

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev canceled meetings with foreign guests to concentrate on domestic crises, and news of the schedule change triggered a steep drop today in the Tokyo stock market and unsettled Wall Street.

Gorbachev put off engagements with foreign visitors, including British opposition leader Neil Kinnock, to deal with border riots in Azerbaijan and the breakaway Communist Party of Lithuania, a senior official said today.

News of the schedule change was not reported by Soviet media, but it was felt abroad.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange recorded its sharpest drop today since Oct. 16, plummeting 438.12 points, and analysts linked the plunge to concern about Gorbachev’s fate. A slight decline in stock prices on Wall Street and a steep drop on the Hong Kong exchange also were attributed to the Soviet leader’s schedule changes.

“To Japan, the worst thing that could happen to the world scenario would be for Gorbachev to drop from sight,” Chris Schreiber, an investment analyst with New Japan Securities, said in Tokyo.

The market reactions pointed up how closely Gorbachev is linked by many in the capitalist world to the success of the reforms and improved East-West relations he has pursued since coming to power in March, 1985.

A senior Communist Party official, asked today about Western news reports that Gorbachev had postponed planned meetings with Kinnock and other foreign dignitaries, replied, “It’s right.”

“We have many problems right now,” he added.

The Communist official, speaking on condition of anonymity, mentioned disturbances this week along the Iranian border and the Lithuanian Communist Party’s decision to break away from the ruling national party headed by Gorbachev.

Gorbachev is expected to travel to Lithuania next week on a mission from the national party’s Central Committee to try to mend the rift with the Lithuanian Communists. They voted two weeks ago to split off from the 20-million-member ruling party and pursue local independence, and Lithuanian party leaders who met with Gorbachev for five hours Thursday said he failed to sway them from their decision.

Meanwhile, the Estonian Communist Party threw its support to the Lithuanians in the dispute with Moscow, reports said today. The Estonian party’s Central Committee meeting Thursday set March 23 for a session of its own full congress.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov would neither confirm nor deny that Gorbachev was putting aside foreign questions to concentrate on domestic problems.

Asked about a report from London that the Soviet ambassador to Britain, Leonid Zamyatin, had told Kinnock that Gorbachev was postponing a Jan. 16 meeting with Kinnock and all other contacts with foreign politicians this month, Gerasimov replied: “Has this meeting been planned? Let the Associated Press compose its own commentary. For me this is all clear. Let them comment on that as they wish.”

Gorbachev’s calendar is rarely made public, and whenever he disappears from the public eye, speculation about his activities and even his health becomes rife. He scoffed at such rumor-mongering this summer at the first session of the Congress of People’s Deputies.