Lithuania on Saturday proposed that its parliament compromise with the Kremlin and impose a moratorium on its declaration of independence, officials said. The proposal from the republic's Council of Ministers appeared to coincide with a compromise offered Tuesday by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and the official news agency Tass said it ``could mark the beginning of the solution of all the so-called `Lithuanian problems.''' Also Saturday, Soviet authorities began pumping natural gas to a fertilizer plant in Lithuania, partly easing the 2-month-old blockade of fuel they imposed to pressure the Baltic republic into renouncing its March 11 declaration of independence. The Lithuanian government suggested the declaration remain valid but its implementation be frozen while negotiations were under way with Moscow, said Algis Cekuolis, a consultant for the Baltic republic. However, Cekuolis said it was unclear whether the compromise would have enough support to be passed by the republic's legislature, which will probably consider it Monday. ``It will be received in parliament by very strong opposition,'' he predicted. The Lithuanian government, under Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene, is considered far more disposed to compromise with the Kremlin than the parliament, which is led by President Vytautas Landsbergis and dominated by members of the pro-independence Sajudis popular front. Gorbachev proposed compromises Tuesday in a meeting with the leaders of the three secessionist Baltic states. He told the national Supreme Soviet legislature earlier that day that ``if Lithuania will suspend the implementation of this act of independence, we may start to talk. That means suspend its implementation at least for the duration of the talks.'' Saturday's proposal by the Lithuanian Council of Ministers suggested exactly that, government spokesmen said. ``Our act of independence would remain valid,'' said council spokesman Gentaras Jatkonis. ``But we are postponing the realization of it.'' Similar proposals have gone back and forth between the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius and Moscow in telegrams and informal talks ``like a ping-pong game'' for weeks but ``this is the first time it's on an official level,'' Cekuolis said. A spokesman for the Lithuanian parliament, Aidas Palubinskas, said he was told on Saturday by a pipeline dispatcher that natural gas was again flowing from the Soviet Union to the Azotas fertilizer plant in the city of Jonova. ``The plant will be getting 3.5 million cubic meters daily,'' Palubinskas was told by dispatcher Alexander Mishikov. Restoration of the gas supply fulfilled a promise made to Mrs. Prunskiene on Wednesday by Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov that 15 percent of the republic's daily natural gas supply would be restored. Politburo member Yuri D. Maslyukov told a news conference in Moscow on Friday that the restoration of fuel to the Lithuanian plant was a goodwill gesture from the Kremlin and a ``reiteration of the Soviet government's interest in speeding negotiations.'' More than 26,000 people have lost their jobs because of the Kremlin's blockade of all oil, most natural gas and some raw materials. Palubinskas said that restoration of gas supplies to the Azotas plant would mean 1,600 employees could return to work by the end of this week. At the beachfront resort of Jurmala in Latvia, leaders of the popular fronts of Latvia and Estonia and the Sajudis movement of Lithuania opened a conference to discuss the future of their movements under democratically elected governments. The delegates, 50 from each of the pro-independence movements, condemned the economic sanctions against Lithuania and discussed ways of increasing cooperation among the Baltic states and with other Soviet republics, Tass reported. ``Nobody has a right to demand either abrogation or halting the acts of independence,'' Tass quoted delegates as saying. ``A retreat will harm the democratic movement.''
