Kremlin authorities have rejected Lithuania's latest effort to break the impasse over its declaration of independence, a news report said Thursday.
On Wednesday, Lithuania's legislature offered to shelve some laws promoting independence - but not the declaration itself - in an effort to draw the Kremlin into negotiations.But Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov said the Lithuanian offer was not sufficient to bring Kremlin leaders to the negotiating table, the unofficial Interfax news agency reported.
"I think that they have not made a single step forward and have not withdrawn from their position," Interfax quoted Ryzhkov as saying today before he presented an economic reform plan to the Supreme Soviet legislature.
Lithuania's resolution, adopted by a vote of 74-15, with 10 abstentions, did not spell out which laws might be suspended.
Soviet officials have objected to measures passed by the secessionist parliament to create a system of special identification cards for Lithuanian citizens, bar Soviet army draft boards in Lithuania and establish Lithuanian control over its borders.
The resolution said the republic was prepared "to temporarily suspend, for the period of official interstate negotiations, those actions and decisions arising from realization of the March 11, 1990, acts of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania related to interests that could be defined by both parties as objects of negotiations."
The Lithuanian Supreme Council, or legislature, convened this morning, but a spokeswoman said she was not aware of the Kremlin rejection or whether it would be discussed.
Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has insisted that Lithuania and its sister republics, Latvia and Estonia, retreat from independence. Latvia and Estonia have made more cautious moves toward independence.