While everyone watches the gulf war unfold, we must not ignore other violent conflicts and human rights violations occurring around the world.

Last week in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Soviet Union's army marched against nationalists in the Lithuanian capitol, killing 15 people and injuring many more. Sunday in Riga, Latvia, Soviet soldiers stormed a government building killing five people. Both attacks were unprovoked and against unarmed people.

After Sunday's attack, hundreds of thousands of people marched in Moscow demanding the resignation of President Mikhail Gorbachev, who has defended the attacks.

The governments of the Baltic states have almost full support from their people who have expressed a desire for more independence. In reply, the Soviet government has taken press freedoms away from these states, and in an apparent shift away from the reforms brought by Glasnost, Moscow has now tried to violently suppress independence movements.

Normally these events would be spread across the front pages of every newspaper in the country. But because a war rages in the Middle East, they are buried on the back pages, if they are covered at all.

U.S. citizens must read the news more carefully to see what important national and international issues are being swept under the rug of Operartion Desert Storm.

If a new world order is going to be a reality, the United States and the United Nations need to respond strongly. Bush took the first step last week by condemning the Soviet attacks and calling for the withdrawal of troops.

But this is not enough. The scheduled summit for Febuary should be used by Bush to demand Gorbachev remove all troops from the Baltic area or face economic sanctions and the loss of aid. If this fails, the matter should be brought before the United Nations.

Bush and Congress will prove themselves hypocrites by not taking diplomatic and economic action against the Soviet Union for its military crackdown as they did against Iraq.

And a new world order will indeed be just a dream.