Gorbachev Calls Vilnius Leaders ‘Adventurers’

MOSCOW —  President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, said by Lithuanian sources to have softened his stance toward their bid for independence, showed nothing of the kind Friday as he denounced the breakaway republic’s leaders as unscrupulous “adventurers.”

“What happened in Lithuania is regarded by us as a flare-up of separatism,” Gorbachev told reporters after talks with French President Francois Mitterrand. “What happened in Lithuania was that a group of adventurers is speculating on such issues as independence.”

“I can say that in a similar situation, the American President would put the situation under control in 24 hours,” Gorbachev declared.

On Thursday, the Soviet president received four Lithuanian lawmakers, and reporters in the Baltic republic said he assured them that their homeland could become independent in as little as two years with his consent if they heeded his demand now to suspend a unilateral declaration of independence passed March 11.

Gorbachev, however, specifically mentioned Friday a new Soviet law that requires a five-year waiting period for any of the nation’s 15 constituent republics that chooses secession. He also seemed to go out of his way to stress that he prefers the longer 10-year period he said France set for the granting of independence to its South Pacific territory of New Caledonia.

The Lithuania crisis threatens to affect next week’s U.S.-Soviet summit in Washington, since to many Americans, the dispute between Ireland-sized Lithuania and the huge Soviet Union seems a grotesque mismatch.

Gorbachev and the Soviets, however, say Lithuania blatantly violated Soviet law by unilaterally decreeing restoration of the independence it lost in 1940, when the Soviet Union forcibly annexed it and its two Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Estonia.

In April, the Kremlin stopped shipping crude oil to Lithuania’s only refinery and cut back natural gas deliveries to punish the secessionist government and force it to obey Soviet law. The energy shortage has put as many as 19,000 people out of work as fuel-deprived factories shut down.

On Friday, hardships for many in the republic of 3.8 million increased when neighborhood heating plants, now without oil, stopped piping hot water to private apartments and homes, Lithuanian officials said.

The legislatures of Estonia and Latvia have also gone on record as wanting independence, though charting a slower and more gradual path. Gorbachev has also condemned their strategies as unconstitutional.

On Friday, lawmakers in Latvia rejected Gorbachev’s demands, and sent the Soviet president a telegram saying he has no constitutional right to void decisions of the Latvian parliament. They also called for negotiations.