Bush, Gorbachev Dealings Reach Impasse Over Baltics : Diplomacy: U.S. plans to file charges of rights abuse in Lithuania, one of many issues bedeviling relationship.

WASHINGTON —  The telephone call between the Oval Office and the Kremlin last week lasted 45 long minutes, not counting the 25-minute delay when the secure line went down. First, President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev talked about the war in the Persian Gulf and the conversation went well, according to an official who was present.

Then Bush changed the subject, warning Gorbachev, politely but frankly, that the Soviet army’s crackdown in Lithuania is unacceptable to the United States. It would freeze the progress in U.S.-Soviet relations that both presidents had worked so hard to build, Bush said.

From the other end of the telephone line came a silence--and then, in Russian, a perfunctory acknowledgement that Bush’s views had been heard.

The exchange--or, rather, the absence of one--was symptomatic of an impasse that has brought Bush to an unhappy watershed in his dealings with Gorbachev. After two years of optimism about an expanding “partnership” with Moscow--a link that Bush described as an important part of his vision of a new world order--the U.S.-Soviet honeymoon has abruptly ended, crushed under the tanks in the streets of Vilnius.

On Tuesday, for the first time in Bush’s tenure, the United States imposed a diplomatic sanction against the Soviet Union, announcing that it will file formal charges of human rights abuse in Lithuania under the rules of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

At the same time, the State Department announced that it plans to station U.S. diplomats in each of the three Baltic republics--Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania--to monitor events during the republics’ struggle for independence.

Even those relatively modest actions came only after a week of debate among Administration officials preoccupied with the war in the gulf. One reason Bush made a point of speaking personally to Gorbachev about the Baltic crisis, a senior official said, was to send “a strong signal to Moscow (that) we’re watching, that there is no diversion (of U.S. attention) to the degree that was the case in 1956.”

In that year, Soviet tanks crushed a revolution in Hungary while the United States was preoccupied with a war in the Middle East.

The Administration also found it difficult deciding what to do about Lithuania, the official said, because many of the options for punishing the Soviet Union--canceling U.S. aid to economic reform programs, for example--could hurt reformers more than the Communist Old Guard.

“We want to keep throwing a lifeline to the reformers,” the official said.

But the Baltic crisis is far from the only problem bedeviling U.S.-Soviet relations. As Gorbachev has turned back from the path of reform, his actions have troubled the Bush Administration in several ways:

--He has allowed the Soviet general staff to stall negotiations toward deep cuts in both conventional and nuclear arms, an ominous indication of growing military influence.

--Gorbachev has rejected the pleas of some of his own advisers for a crash program of radical economic reforms, dashing the hopes of some U.S. officials who hoped that the Soviet Union could evolve toward a Western-style free market system.

--The conflict between Gorbachev and the restive leaders of the country’s 15 republics has intensified, posing a serious dilemma for this country: Should the United States continue to deal with the Kremlin, or gradually shift its attention to the provinces?

Underlying all of this is the conviction, which Bush and his aides all proclaim, that the improvement in superpower relations has rested largely on Gorbachev’s momentum--now lost--in the direction of democracy.

“The process of reform in the U.S.S.R. has been an essential element in the improvement of U.S.-Soviet relations,” Bush said last week in a tough public complaint about the crackdown in Lithuania. “Events like those now taking place in the Baltic states threaten to set back, or perhaps even reverse, the process of reform which is so important . . . in the development of the new international order.”

So far, Bush aides note hopefully, Gorbachev’s turn to the right has had little direct effect on Soviet foreign policy. The Soviet leader has made a point of reaffirming his interest in good relations with the West and appointed a reform-minded diplomat, Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, as foreign minister to succeed Eduard A. Shevardnadze (who resigned last month to protest the domestic crackdown).

At a Moscow news conference Tuesday, Gorbachev disclaimed presidential responsibility for the deaths of 14 people 10 days ago in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. He pledged a full legal probe of that incident and another one on Sunday in Riga, Latvia, where six have died in the past week.

Gorbachev appeared tired and burdened as he made his remarks Tuesday.

He declared that his reform policies would continue and that he would not abide right-wing groups trying to take power with military backing.

“The objective conditions that created that new foreign policy have not changed--and that is a Soviet Union that is inward-looking, that is still in need of the good will and resources of the West,” one adviser said.

Still, officials are troubled by Moscow’s slowdown in arms control negotiations, which have been central in ending the 40-year-long Cold War. Especially worrisome, they said, has been the Soviet action in moving thousands of armored vehicles east of the Ural mountains and reclassifying some army and air force units as navy forces in an attempt to exempt them from destruction under last year’s agreement on conventional forces in Europe.

Officials said that those moves, which they described as clear violations of the pact, were apparently the work of a Soviet military that has felt freer to exert political power since Gorbachev turned to his generals for help in putting down rebellion in the republics.

“The military may feel somewhat more empowered, just because of conditions in the country. . . ,” said one. “You’re getting something of a backlash from the general staff.”

So far, the military’s political power is being felt mostly in arms control, the generals’ traditional “sphere of influence.” But some officers, including retired Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, a close Gorbachev adviser, have been arguing more broadly for a less cozy relationship with Washington--and if they win the day, the future of U.S.-Soviet relations could be distinctly chillier.

No one is forecasting a return to the Cold War but the Administration’s grand ambitions for a U.S.-Soviet “partnership” that could help stabilize the entire world may give way to a much more limited form of cooperation.

“We’re going to have to revise our notions of a ‘partnership’ with the Soviet Union and a new world order,” warned Helmut Sonnenfeldt, one of the architects of the U.S.-Soviet detente of the 1970s as a high official in the Richard M. Nixon Administration. “Partnership implies a general convergence of values and habits and confidence in each other. That’s going to break down.”

Already, just as in the age of detente, U.S.-Soviet relations are resting increasingly on the two countries’ shared interest in arms control, whatever other disagreements they may have. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, appearing with envoys from the three Baltic states on Tuesday, told reporters that a Bush-Gorbachev summit meeting may still take place on schedule next month, noting: “With respect to arms control, it’s important to move that process forward.”

At the same time, though, the Administration also plans to expand its contacts with the leaders of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics, a move that will clearly displease Gorbachev.

“It’s a way of making a point,” a senior official said. “It’s also a way of getting to know these leaders . . . in a Soviet Union where not all the powerful leaders are in (the central government). That’s a fact of life.”

By filing charges of human rights abuse under the rules of the 34-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Administration is invoking a procedure that could embarrass Gorbachev without entailing any serious material consequences.

Under the pact, the charges will be brought before the governments of all 34 CSCE members, and then communicated to the next European conference on human rights--which, coincidentally, is slated to take place in Moscow this fall.

In Congress, the House debated a resolution condemning the Soviet Union for actions in the Baltic states but several members said that it is not tough enough and vowed to introduce another anti-Kremlin measure in the near future.

Proponents of the resolution, which will be voted upon today, said that they softened it to meet objections from the White House and the State Department.

In the Senate, both Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) and his counterpart, Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) denounced the crackdown in Latvia and Lithuania in strong terms. They noted that the Senate passed a resolution last week asking President Bush to consider a series of measures that would terminate any economic aid and technical exchange programs with the Soviet Union in reprisal for the bloodshed in the Baltics.

Mitchell said that Gorbachev “must now take responsibility for what has occurred” whether he gave the orders to use deadly force in Lithuania or Lativa or not.

“Action is now required,” Mitchell said. “The Bush Administration must now act to prevent any (Soviet) miscalculation. . . . It would be a tragedy if our hopes for the Soviet Union are buried in the bloodshed of those seeking Baltic independence.”

Dole, concurring with Mitchell’s views, said that the Baltic crackdown was discussed by Republican senators at a weekly luncheon and they agreed that it was time for the Administration to take action to protest.

“You can’t get the Nobel Peace Prize and start killing people in the streets in Lithuania and Latvia,” Dole said, alluding to Gorbachev’s receipt of the coveted award.

Staff writers William J. Eaton and Norman Kempster contributed to this report.