Baltic groups resist Soviet reforms

Nationalist groups in Estonia and Latvia on Friday denounced President Mikhail Gorbachev's plan for reforming the Soviet government. In Estonia, the ruling Presidium called a special session of the legislature for this week to consider complaints that the reform would weaken the self-administration of the 14 non-Russian republics, according to the newspaper Sovietskaya Estonia.

The Estonia Peoples' Front declared that the reform, which would create a new national parliament and a powerful presidency, leaves the republics ``with fewer rights than a province of Czarist Russia,'' the paper said. Complaints in Latvia also centered on the loss of local control.

The constitutional reform is a key part of Mr. Gorbachev's attempt to drive out members of the old guard and replace them with supporters of perestroika, his plan for restructuring, and glasnost, greater openness.