Blocking the route for the vast majority of Iran's petroleum exports - and for its food and consumer imports - would amount to economic suicide.

Among other things, the money would pay for consumer imports to ease tensions.

Mr. Shmelev would use the consumer imports "to buy this money back as cheaply as possible."

Even less verifiable is a widespread suspicion that the smuggling of opium and heroin, of which Laotian mountain tribesmen are major producers, also finances consumer imports.

There are no obvious answers to these great questions, raised anew in response to a flurry of Soviet deals to finance consumer imports.

But as I originally stated, numerous forces are responsible for limiting the consumer imports of this disparate group of countries.

Cheap consumer imports, resulting from a chronically overvalued Naira, coupled with excessively high domestic production costs due in part to erratic electricity and fuel supply, pushed down utilization of industrial capacity to less than 30%.

LEAD: WILL Mikhail Gorbachev try to shore up support at home with foreign-financed consumer imports?

The pressure on the Kremlin to increase consumer imports is undoubtedly building.

The impoverished home market means that there is negligible demand for consumer imports and even insufficient demand for Chinese goods, making China completely dependent on its export trade.