The Soviet military commandant expressed hope Thursday that by mid-February troops could begin returning home and authorities could lift a curfew imposed after violent ethnic clashes in Azerbaijan. Representatives of Armenia and Azerbaijan prepared to open peace talks Friday across the Soviet Union in Riga, capital of the Baltic republic of Latvia. A spokesman for the Azerbaijani People's Front accused President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of caving in to Communist hard-liners by sending troops to occupy Baku, and added: ``Gorbachev's hands are now bloody.'' Lt. Gen. Vladimir S. Dubinyak told the first foreign journalists permitted to visit Baku since the military seized control of the city Jan. 20 there are ``many positively inclined forces trying to noralize the situation and end the curfew.'' He said the 11 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew might be lifted within two weeks. He said tensions would have to ease further, including an end to leaflets appealing to Baku workers to strike to protest the military presence. At night, during the curfew, military trucks and armored personnel carriers stand at most intersections between Baku airport and the center of the city. Soldiers guarding the intersections wear helmets and carry automatic weapons. Red flowers mark where Azerbaijanis died fighting the military intervention. On Jan. 13, Azerbaijanis attacked ethnic Armenians and drove them from their homes in Baku, an oil center and the capital of the republic of Azerbaijan in the southern Soviet Union. Soviet troops stormed Baku a week later. The official Soviet news agency Tass reported the death toll in Baku alone since the troops moved in at 139. That includes 106 civilians, 28 soldiers and five policemen. As many as 498 people were wounded, Tass said. Iran on Thursday offered to send doctors, nurses and medicine to neighboring Soviet Azerbaijan, whose residents are primarily Shiite Moslem, like most Iranians. The offer was reported by Tehran television, monitored in Cyprus. Iran has condemned the use of force in Azerbaijan. Dubinyak said regular army soldiers, making up 5,000 of the 17,000 troops now committed to Baku, could be sent home, military equipment could be removed from the streets, and the remaining Interior Ministry soldiers could patrol the streets without weapons. Dubinyak said he would welcome talks with the Azerbaijan People's Front, a group that Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov has said the military is trying to crush as a nationalist movement. Dubinyak said the people's front has not proposed talks, but a spokesman for the group interrupted to say such discussions could begin any time. The People's Front spokesman, Nadchov Nadzhavov, editor of the group's banned newspaper, charged that soldiers were sent into Baku in part to prevent the front from making a strong showing in local elections. The date for the elections is to be set this month, and they must take place within three months. ``I can make the prognosis that they won't leave before the elections,'' Nadzhavov told reporters. He also criticized Gorbachev's handling of the crisis in Azerbaijan, saying the Kremlin leader had given in to reformers by not cracking down on an independence movement in Lithuania and then had given in to Communist hard-liners by sending troops into Azerbaijan. ``Gorbachev's hands are now bloody,'' he said. Lt. Gen. Mikhail P. Kolesnikov, a representative of the Soviet army serving under the commandant, told reporters that the military had been affected by the ``Tblisi syndrome.'' He said criticism that followed the crushing of a nationalist demonstration in the Georgian capital on April 9, 1989, had demoralized the military and hindered decision making. ``We saw outrages,'' he said. ``We saw instances of blood-letting, but we couldn't do anything.'' Azerbaijani representatives arrived in Riga for peace talks with a three-man delegation of the Armenian All-National Movement. ``Maybe the first steps toward dialogue with the Armenians will take place. We are counting on that,'' the chief Azerbaijani delegate, Khikmet Khazhizade of his republic's People's Front group, told The Associated Press. The talks are sponsored by the Baltic Council, a grouping of the three people's front organizations in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Organizers said they hoped the talks could start Friday morning. The Baltic activists cautioned against expecting quick results. ``Such talks could help, but we need two or three months, as the problems are very deep,'' said Edvin Inken, a Latvian People's Front leader who recently visited Baku.
