Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: DLP leader starts to form government in Lithuania Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 15:07:21 EST Message-ID: Lines: 52 \SE A;WORLD \SS (WS) \HD DLP leader starts to form government in Lithuania \BY REUTERS \DT VILNIUS, Lithuania VILNIUS, Lithuania (Reuters) - Algirdas Brazauskas began talks late last night to form a government after a final count of votes from the Nov. 15 election left his Democratic Labor Party still holding a parliamentary majority. Mr. Brazauskas' DLP emerged with 73 seats in the 141-seat parliament, down from a preliminary 80 seats returned immediately after the elections last month and the runoff contests eight days ago. The Sajudis nationalist movement of Vytautas Landsbergis, the music professor who steered the Baltic republic to independence from Moscow last year, shared 52 seats with its allies. The final count in Lithuania's first post-Soviet elections had been protracted because of the high number of absentee votes sent in by mail from outlying regions and from Lithuanians living abroad. The DLP leader, a former Communist who broke with Moscow during the long independence campaign and now espouses cautious market reforms, immediately began talks with Mr. Landsbergis on the political future. Sajudis and its allies have already made it clear that they see themselves as the opposition and have ruled out any coalition government with the DLP. A landslide Sajudis victory in 1988 elections put an end to Communist rule in Lithuania, which was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 along with Latvia and Estonia. The three Baltic states won independence last year. But the first year of independence has been marked by deep economic crisis. Industrial output in the first 10 months of the year fell by a startling 48.5 percent compared with the same period of 1991. [Gerald Nadler, Moscow correspondent of The Washington Times, reported after the election that Mr. Brazauskas - who is popular in Lithuania and respected in the Kremlin - said he would try to obtain oil from Moscow below world prices but insist on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Lithuania.] This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM