Gorbachev Offers Deal for Lithuania Secession : Baltics: The republic could be independent in two years if it bows to Soviet demands, reports say.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in an unexpected and major attempt at reconciliation with Lithuania, assured its representatives Thursday that their homeland could become independent in two or three years with his blessing if it bows to his demands now, Lithuanian sources said.

In a hastily arranged private meeting in the Kremlin, the Soviet president offered to lift punishing economic sanctions against the breakaway Baltic republic and open talks with its government if it suspends the unilateral declaration of independence adopted in March.

The Lithuanian news agency ELTA, in a dispatch from special correspondent Balys Bucelis, reported: “Gorbachev said in principle (that) he had nothing against Lithuania leaving the U.S.S.R.” A participant in the talks said they marked the start of a “narrowing of differences” in the domestic political crisis that has grabbed world headlines for months and threatened to sour the U.S.-Soviet summit that begins next week.

Another journalist in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius said he was informed by an official present at the meeting that Gorbachev spoke of Lithuania achieving independence in as little as two years, the first time the Soviet leader has mentioned a time frame and a hint that a strict new law regulating secession from the Soviet Union may be softened in its application.

There was no immediate comment from state-run Soviet media on the meeting, which the ELTA report said began shortly after 2 p.m. and ran about 40 minutes. Bucelis said Gorbachev telephoned the Lithuanian mission in Moscow just before midnight Wednesday to offer to receive the republic’s chief representative here, Egidijus Bickauskas.

Earlier that evening, the Lithuanian Supreme Council, or Parliament, had signaled its readiness to compromise by offering to suspend laws adopted since the March 11 independence declaration that the Kremlin objects to, in exchange for the beginning of negotiations.

Gorbachev has insisted that the independence declaration itself be put on hold, a step backward that the Supreme Council refused, and the ELTA report said he held fast to that position in his meeting with Bickauskas and three other Lithuanian lawmakers, Vaidotas Antanaitis, Romas Gudaitis and Nikolai Medvedev.

“If that is done, he is ready to begin negotiations shortly,” Bucelis reported of the Kremlin leader’s unchanging condition for talks.

But even here, Gorbachev reportedly took new pains to show his moderation. He reassured the Lithuanians that what he was demanding--”the freezing of the declaration”--is a flexible formula, the ELTA correspondent reported.

While the Soviet media consistently depicts the Lithuanians as naive idiots, Gorbachev, according to the ELTA report, treated the delegates with respect.

“I understand your wishes,” he reportedly told them. “You have been conducting yourself with honor, openly and consistently, but negotiations are necessary.”

The Soviet leader also added a sweetener: assistance from the central government to help counteract the effects of the Kremlin’s April 18 suspension of deliveries of crude oil and some shipments of natural gas, which has led to the closing of some Lithuanian factories and thousands of layoffs, the ELTA report said.

Oil and gas-fired power plants, now running critically short of fuel, may cease furnishing electricity to thousands of factories today, meaning tens of thousands of additional workers could be idled. Already, municipal hot water supplies to private homes and apartments is scheduled to be cut off today.

If the independence proclamation is frozen, “Gorbachev pledged not only to lift the blockade--or as he put it, economic sanctions--but also to take measures to help rebuild the Lithuanian economy,” the Lithuanian news agency report said.

In discussions on what to offer Soviet authorities to obtain negotiations, members of the Lithuanian Supreme Council said it was too dangerous to suspend the declaration that proclaimed a restoration of the independence the republic lost when it was forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, along with the two other Baltic states, Estonia and Latvia.

Bickauskas handed Gorbachev the copy of the Supreme Council’s offer to suspend new laws, “and unfortunately it did not satisfy him” the ELTA report said. But significantly, after meeting with the Soviet leader, Medvedev no longer was ruling out a freeze on the act of independence itself, and called the talks the start of a mutual search for compromise.

“This was something new. . . . I see a slow, very cautious narrowing of our differences,” the Lithuanian lawmaker was quoted by the British news agency Reuters as saying in Moscow.

To Gorbachev’s insistence that the act of independence be put on hold, “We said we would think about it,” Reuters quoted Medvedev as saying. “If we accept a freeze, we should have to have guarantees that this freezing would not turn into a permafrost.”

Yan Olikhnovich, a journalist with the non-governmental Solidarity With Poland press bureau in Vilnius, said Bickauskas informed him in a telephone call after the meeting that “Gorbachev said he has nothing against Lithuanian independence and its breaking off from the Soviet Union, but that it can only be possible in two or three years.”

Gorbachev’s remarks indicated that a new law passed this year regulating for the first time the theoretical right of the 15 constituent Soviet republics to secede might not be fully applied to Lithuania. The law, regarded by nationalists in many areas of the country as an intentional hurdle to their independence aspirations, sets stringent requirements, including the holding of a referendum and a cooling-off period that can last as long as five years.