Rep. Cox Calls Soviet Peace Proposal a Ploy : Mideast: The O.C. congressman suggests hard-line Communists want to keep Saddam Hussein in power.

WASHINGTON —  An Orange County congressman just back from the Soviet Union charged Tuesday that hard-line Communists, frightened at the potential loss of another client state, are behind a Kremlin peace proposal whose real intent is to keep Saddam Hussein in power and preserve Soviet influence in the Middle East.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who last week toured the rebellious Baltic republics and later met with Soviet officials and opposition leaders in Moscow, also hailed Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin’s public demand Tuesday that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev step down, crediting Yeltsin with taking a “courageous step.”

Cox said Yeltsin’s demand, made over Soviet television, was “much anticipated.”

“It was a courageous step and underscores the towering strength of Boris Yeltsin,” Cox said. “He is widely acclaimed throughout the Soviet empire as the only figure . . . in a leadership position in the Soviet Union who is willing to say the things that must be said. He is quintessentially an honest person. These are the things that must be said.”

Yeltsin called for the immediate resignation of Gorbachev, accusing him of leading “the country to a dictatorship.”

“Yeltsin certainly has raised the stakes and taken a bold but constructive step in offering the people an alternative,” Cox said. “Clearly, Gorbachev is no longer the lesser of two evils, staving off a takeover by the right. Gorbachev is the right--he is carrying forth the policies of the military right. Therefore, the alternative offered by Yeltsin is far superior, and the people of the Soviet Union recognize that.”

Cox, meanwhile, said his meetings persuaded him that Gorbachev’s still-secret peace plan reflects the fears of the right-wing of the Soviet Communist party.

“These hard-line Communists who are now making policy in the Kremlin have obviously been let out of their cages,” Cox said. “They . . . are angry at the loss of their satellites in Eastern Europe--they said so. Now they see Iraq as yet another Soviet satellite that is about to be toppled by the West.”

That view was forcefully expressed by Rafik Nishanov, chairman of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet, Cox said, and other members of Gorbachev’s government. Nishanov, whose post is roughly equivalent to the Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives, also insisted that the Soviet central government was not behind the recent violent crackdowns in Lithuania and Latvia which left nearly two dozen dead, Cox said.

“They’re clearly going for the big lie, now,” the congressman added.

Cox and a dozen other members of Congress also met with opposition leaders, including Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic. The lawmakers made the trip under the sponsorship of the congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors compliance with the 1975 Helsinki accords on human rights in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Cox is not a commission member but was invited because of his interest in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. He last visited Lithuania a year ago, shortly after the republic held its first democratic elections in 50 years.

President Bush on Tuesday dismissed the Soviet peace plan, the details of which have not been made public, calling it “well short of what would be required” to end the Persian Gulf War. “There will be no concessions, nothing to give” in exchange for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, the President said.

In a separate, solo trip to Vladivostok, the large Soviet port and military complex in the Far East, Cox delivered a pitch for democratic ideals and free enterprise to what he said was a largely receptive audience at the opening of an American design exhibit sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency.

Cox was the first elected U.S. official to visit Vladivostok since former President Gerald Ford toured the city in the mid-1970s, his office said. He returned to Washington late Monday.

Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, Cox told a crowd of perhaps 1,000 Soviets, many of whom were members of the military, “Whenever any government becomes destructive of the God-given rights of the individual, it is the right of the people to change it, or to abolish it, and to institute a new government.”

The congressman added: “When this historic chapter of the world’s history is ended, it will be written that the peoples of the Soviet Union led the world out of darkness by proving that Marxism didn’t work, but that freedom does.” Cox said the speech was warmly received, and that city officials in Vladivostok presented him with a declaration condemning the Soviet policy toward Lithuania and expressing support for the Lithuanian republic.

The Soviet Union annexed the independent republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on the Baltic Sea in 1940, at the outset of World War II, in a move never officially recognized by the United States. After a year of pro-independence activism, Soviet troops last month attacked and occupied the Lithuanian television complex and the Latvian Interior Ministry, killing 22 and injuring scores of civilians.

Cox and the other members of Congress visited all three republics in a trip that began Feb. 11 and met with leaders of the independence movements. Following a subsequent meeting with Yeltsin in Moscow, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) declared: “We believe the only way to maintain (former Soviet dictator Josef) Stalin’s borders (in the Baltics) would be to adopt Stalin’s tyranny.”

During his meeting with the congressmen, Yeltsin said “that he had no doubt that Gorbachev gave the order” to attack the government buildings in Lithuania and Latvia, Cox said.

In a separate meeting with Cox and two other members of the delegation, Soviet historian and political opposition leader Yuri Afanasyev told the lawmakers that the United States should not cling to Gorbachev out of the fear that he will be replaced by a more reactionary leader.

“There is no one further to the right than Gorbachev,” Cox quoted Afanasyev as saying. “Those are the people he represents.” Paraphrasing, Cox said Afanasyev added, “I’m not speaking against Gorbachev personally, but if one looks at the policies he is pursuing, he is pursuing the policies of the right. . . . In the end, all we can judge are the results.”