Soviet Crackdown Against Strike Leaders Stepped Up

MOSCOW — Soviet officials have opened criminal investigations and taken disciplinary action against instigators of strikes in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Soviet news agency Tass said on Friday.

The announcement of tough measures to end a 2-month-old general strike followed a call by Azerbaijan’s Communist Party leader for talks with officials of the neighboring republics of Armenia and Georgia.

Abdul-Rakhman Vezirov said all three Transcaucasian republics in the south of the Soviet Union should work out a strategy on ethnic problems.

In Yerevan, capital of Armenia, factories were closed by a one-day strike to protest the Kremlin’s rejection of the Armenians’ chief demand in the dispute--the transfer to Armenian control of Nagorno-Karabakh, administered since 1923 by Azerbaijan.

Tass quoted a senior official in the Soviet general prosecutor’s office, Arkady Boretsky, as saying that prosecutors “intend to restore public order and labor discipline, to use their powers fully” in the territory. Action was being taken, it said, to “bring people to disciplinary responsibility.”

The dispute has claimed at least 36 lives since February, when Nagorno-Karabakh first requested transfer to Armenia.

The Soviet Union’s highest state body, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, this week rejected the transfer and ordered Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities to end strikes and lawlessness.

Tass said a criminal probe had been opened against the director of a Nagorno-Karabakh publishing house, Y. Nersisyan, “who personally tried to stop his own enterprise” from working.

Prosecutors have also asked the courts to order the officials who failed to ensure operations at the train station in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, to compensate the state for losses.

Disciplinary action had been taken against the chief of the train station, Tass said. Such action was also being considered against the directors of the Stepanakert city communications center and the city transport organization.

100 Reinstated in Jobs

The report said more than 100 people in Nagorno-Karabakh had been reinstated to their jobs after being dismissed in connection with interethnic relations.

Soviet TV said Friday that the situation remains tense in Stepanakert. The strike is still in effect, few shops were open and only two buses were running.

On Thursday, Soviet media said six people had been arrested in Armenia on charges related to the unrest. Earlier, Tass announced the expulsion of an Armenian nationalist involved in the protests.

Azerbaijani leader Vezirov’s proposed talks on ethnic tension appeared to be a first step by Azerbaijan toward meeting Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s appeal to respect the traditions of minorities, to avoid troubles such as the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, said his call for talks with Armenian party leader Suren G. Arutyunyan and Georgian leader Dzhumber I. Patiashvili was aired on Azerbaijani television on Thursday.