Georgia's Communist Party leader is rejecting nationalist demands for immediate independence, saying such a move would jeopardize democratic reform introduced by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
The party's stance toward independence is expected to be a key issue at the Georgian Party Congress opening Tuesday, just 13 months after 20 people died in clashes between Soviet troops and pro-independence demonstrators in Tbilisi, the republic's capital.Meanwhile, anti-independence demonstrators in Estonia briefly raised the Soviet hammer-and sickle flag over parliament Tuesday, and thousands of Soviet soldiers tried to break into Latvia's legislature as tension rose sharply in the secessionist Baltic republics.
Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis, in a radio interview broadcast as U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III flew to Moscow, appealed to the Americans to raise the issue of Baltic independence with Soviet leaders.
The drama came a day after Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev declared moves by Latvia and Estonia to break from Moscow null and void. He gave no hint whether he would retaliate with sanctions as he has with Lithuania.
A pro-Moscow crowd in the Estonian capital of Tallinn advanced on the 14th century Toompea Palace and tore down the blue, white and black flag raised last week when lawmakers voted for independence, witnesses said.
In Latvia, thousands of whistling and shouting Soviet soldiers tried to break into Parliament as part of a Baltic-wide protest of independence moves, witnesses said.
"The whole street is full of people. No doubt there are thousands of people, and only thanks to special militia units the situation has normalized," said Aris Jansons, chief aide to Latvia's president.
Banners carried by the protesters declared, "Long Live the U.S.S.R." and "Latvia Should be a U.S.S.R. Republic," according to Jansons, who was speaking from the Parliament building.
Independence - but not now
In Georgia, Givi Gumbaridze, who became the Georgian party leader after the April 1989 clashes, said he opposed calls for independence similar to declarations recently made by the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. He has advocated more autonomy for the southern Soviet republic, but not immediate independence.
Gumbaridze, in an interview published Monday by the national Communist Party newspaper Pravda, said those who sought an immediate political and economic break with the Soviet Union could only upset the process of democratization, known as perestroika, initiated by Gorbachev.
"Political boldness and political rashness are absolutely different things that exclude each other," he said.
"Some people are eager to seize power by means of `ultrapatriotic' calls for immediate independence," Gumbaridze said. Elsewhere, he said, some top officials refuse to give up privileges and allow the party to renovate itself.
But Mamuka Tsagareli, a spokesman for the radical Party of National Independence in the republic, said Georgia's Communist Party "ought to disband."
Baltics still press demands
But in the Baltics, ethnic Russian groups have called for protests and strikes Tuesday following President Mikhail Gorbachev's decree that the Estonian and Latvian independence declarations were no more legal than Lithuania's more radical proclamation that led to a Soviet economic block-ade.
The call for stikes and protests in the Baltic republics came two days after the three republics joined forces in their fight to regain the independence they lost when they were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940.
Gorbachev has not yet responded directly to an appeal by the three presidents at Saturday's Baltic summit for joint talks on independence.
A presidential decree, read on the official nightly television news program Vremya and later carried by the official news agency Tass, said the self-declared restoration of sovereignty by Latvia and Estonia had no legal force.
Anti-independence ethnic Russian groups in Estonia and Latvia have called for demonstrations and strikes Tuesday to protest the moves to secede.
Moscow ruled Lithuania's independence illegal one week after it was declared in Vilnius and imposed tough economic sanctions, including a cutoff of all oil and most gas, in an effort to make the republic rescind the declaration.
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Measure opposed
Reform-minded Soviet legislators condemn a newly approved bill making it a crime to insult or slander the Soviet president, saying the measure could be used to terrorize and persecute government opponents.
The Supreme Soviet passed the measure "protecting the honor and dignity of the president" on Monday, less than two weeks after an unofficial May Day protest in Red Square that saw thousands jeer President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other leaders.