Baltic States

When President George Bush announced U.S. recognition of the independence of the Baltic states on Monday, it was cause for celebration.The local Lithuanian community was euphoric."

On Monday, five days after the collapse of the coup by the Soviet hard-liners, a local Estonian policeman stood guard at the closed Communist party headquarters in Tallinn, the Estonian capital.Meanwhile, the Latvian Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans, alonwith his Lithuanian and Estonian counterparts, was in Western Europe signing diplomatic agreements with Norway, Germany, France and other countries re-establishing diplomatic relations. And in Lithuania the government was issuing Lithuanian passports to its citizens and visas to foreign travelers.

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine -- President Bush pushed hard yesterday for the Soviet central government to formally release the Baltic republics today.White House officials made clear that if the union's Supreme Soviet votes as expected today to grant independence to Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, U.S. recognition would quickly follow."

Beverly B. Byron plopped into a chair behind her desk in the late afternoon Monday and looked forward to at least attempting to catch herbreath.Late summer is supposed to be one of those infrequent times of the year when the pace slows for members of the U.S. House of Representatives like Byron, who presides over Maryland's sixth district.But for Byron, a Frederick resident, the stop at her district office on North Court Street was practically the first respite in a day that combined keeping abreast of a military coup in the Soviet Union with an annual Carroll tour.

WASHINGTON -- Politicians like to talk about what they call "defining moments" -- meaning occasions in which their performance shapes public perceptions of their abilities. For President Bush, the crisis in the Soviet Union is just such a moment.The president has reached giddy heights of popular approval in the public opinion polls on the strength of his handling of foreign policy questions during his first 30 months in the White House. But the situation he confronts today is both complex and threatening enough to dwarf anything he has encountered so far.As such, it will reveal far more about Bush's skills than ever was revealed even by his aggressive display of strength in the Persian Gulf or, on the other side of the ledger, his willingness to kowtow to the Chinese after Tiananmen Square and his original inability to grasp the dimensions of the changes in Eastern Europe two summers ago.Bush's policy toward the Soviet Union, one shared by other western leaders, had been based on two premises.

MOSCOW -- A solemn Mikhail S. Gorbachev appeared on national television last night to inform his countrymen of "the most profound changes in the history of our state."Russia and two other republics agreed yesterday to sign the newly drafted union treaty on Aug. 20, said Mr. Gorbachev, who held out hopethat some of the resisting republics would reconsider.The treaty would transform the country into a loose federation and give more power to the republics, scrapping a 1922 charter that created the Soviet state.

WASHINGTON -- The postponement of the Moscow summit meeting is the most serious manifestation to date of an obvious fact: War unleashes unintended consequences, many of them most undesirable.When President Bush launched the massive air assault against Iraq, he was letting loose more than American and allied air power. In attempting to control one situation -- the conduct of Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf region -- he was inviting developments that now and through the course of the war will dictate to him.On the operational level, for example, he currently finds his forces having to fight an oil slick in the gulf while they continue to pound directly at Iraq.

MOSCOW -- Russian leader Boris N. Yeltsin, flying to Tallinn yesterday in a dramatic defense of Baltic independence bids against Soviet troops, joined the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in asking the United Nations to call an emergency international conference on the future of the Baltic republics.Their appeal proposed that the U.N.-approved Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq to pull its troops out of Kuwait be extended, permitting the Baltic conference to take place in the interim.The four presidents also jointly condemned the Soviet army's violent assault on Lithuanian broadcast facilities early yesterday morning in which Lithuanian officials say 14 people died and 144 were injured.

WASHINGTON -- The White House strongly protested yesterday the Kremlin's decision to send troops into seven rebellious republics to enforce a military draft and urged the Soviet Union to "cease attempts at intimidation."In its harshest criticism of Soviet internal policies since Lithuania touched off the secessionist movement last spring, the White House called the deployment of troops to track down draft dodgers in the Soviet republics "provocative and counterproductive."The statement by White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater expressed special alarm about the treatment of the three Baltic states -- Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia -- which have never been officially recognized by the United States as as part of the Soviet Union.