Pro-Soviet Latvian Police Jeer Republic’s President

RIGA, Soviet Union —  Hundreds of pro-Kremlin Latvian police officers jeered the republic’s president Monday, reflecting the deep division in local law enforcement ranks over the issue of independence.

The 500 to 800 Latvian police officers--mostly ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians--jammed an auditorium at the University of Latvia for a four-hour meeting with the Baltic republic’s leaders, including their boss, Latvian Interior Minister Alois Vaznis, plus President Anatolijs Gorbunovs and Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis.

The police whistled and hooted when Vaznis said he had tried to depoliticize the police force, which is part of the Interior Ministry, and they called for his resignation.

The raucous meeting reflected a sharp split between police supporting Latvia’s pro-independence government and those loyal to the national government in Moscow and the anti-independence branch of the Communist Party in Riga.

That split was aggravated on Jan. 20 when elite “black beret” riot police loyal to Moscow attacked the Latvian Interior Ministry, killing four people, including two regular police officers.

When Gorbunovs said the barricades in Riga had been erected spontaneously by Latvians fearing a Soviet attack, jeering arose from the audience. The president was unable to continue until a senior police officer called for order.

In other developments:

--A Moscow official said a few foreign businesses have canceled or suspended investment plans in the Soviet Union since the crackdown in the Baltics. Deputy Mayor Sergei Stankevich’s remark was the first official indication that worsening domestic turmoil might hurt foreign investment.

--In the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, about 1,000 television workers rallied to demand their jobs back. The workers have been locked out of work because of the Jan. 13 Soviet military takeover of the republic’s TV facility that killed 14 people.

--Lithuania’s Parliament denounced as “a crude human rights violation” two new Kremlin decrees that will institute joint military-police patrols in major cities and give the KGB and Interior Ministry sweeping search-and-seizure powers at sites where economic sabotage is suspected. Moscow’s deputy mayor also condemned the plan for joint military-police patrols.

--Soviet Interior Ministry troops firing shots seized two Lithuanian customs posts late Sunday and ordered them shut permanently, a government spokesman said.