Gorbachev Warns Rebels Moscow May Impose Rule

MOSCOW —  President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said today that he might be forced to impose direct rule from Moscow in the Baltics and other flash points and clashed angrily with his main political rival, Russian Federation leader Boris N. Yeltsin.

In a speech to the Soviet Parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, Gorbachev said the Kremlin is seriously concerned by the situation in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, whose governments are seeking independence.

“I would like to stress that where the situation becomes especially tense and there is a serious threat to the state and to people’s well-being, I will have to introduce a state of emergency or presidential rule,” Gorbachev said.

“In such a situation, I think the president will have to take full responsibility on himself, because my attempts to reach an agreement on working together end up by us not being able to agree,” he said.

The Congress was also marked by a fiery speech from Yeltsin, who said Gorbachev’s proposal to bind the 15 constituent Soviet republics into a new Union Treaty was a cover for a “Kremlin decree.”

He told deputies that Russia, over whose increasingly radical Parliament he presides, rejected the draft treaty.

In a clear response to Yeltsin, an angry Gorbachev declared: “Enough of frightening the Soviet people with the Kremlin. This is our Kremlin. We created it as it is and we want to renew it now.

“Political speculation on this is populism with rotten roots and must be denounced.”