U.S. Offers Soviets Economic Aid for Cooperation on Iraq : Gulf crisis: Bush would mount an international effort to provide assistance to Moscow, officials say. Troops for multinational forces and a pullout of military advisers to Baghdad are asked.

The Bush Administration has offered to mount an international effort to provide massive economic aid to the Soviet Union if Moscow pulls its military advisers out of Iraq and agrees to join multinational forces now in the Mideast, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The actual amount of U.S. and other allied aid, to be negotiated by President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev at their summit in Helsinki, Finland, on Sunday, will depend on how far the Soviets are willing to go, U.S. officials said.

The plan represents a full-scale reversal of previous Administration policy, which had been to refuse to provide any economic aid to the Soviets until Moscow moved further toward the West both politically and in economic terms.

U.S. officials have told the Soviets that at a minimum, Moscow must call home the Soviet military advisers stationed in Iraq who have become a major symbolic thorn in the Western side and a possible impediment to Western military action against Baghdad.

But Washington also wants the Soviets to contribute troops and equipment to the multinational military force that has been assembled in the region. Officials said that if the Soviets agree to that, the United States would be willing to go further in providing aid.

The dramatic offer, which U.S. officials said already has been communicated to the Soviets, is expected to be the major topic on the agenda for the leaders of the two countries at the Finland summit.

As late as mid-July, at the annual seven-nation economic summit in Houston, Bush blocked efforts by the French and other allies to provide large-scale aid to the Soviets, contending that there was no point in doing so until the Soviets adopted a free-market economic system.

At that time, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said that sizable U.S. lending to Moscow was “not in the cards.”

But on Wednesday, the White House took a decidedly different line, with Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater saying Soviet cooperation in the Mideast effort “has impressed us to the point that” Bush has “strengthened our political commitment” to find ways to aid the Soviets.

Fitzwater would not provide any details on how the United States might assist the Soviets. But he confirmed without hesitation that the topic “will be discussed” at Sunday’s summit.

Officials said the Administration changed its mind partly as a result of the Soviets’ cooperation in obtaining United Nations approval to impose and enforce economic sanctions against Iraq, and partly in recognition of Moscow’s help in other diplomatic initiatives.

U.S. strategists also concede that the Soviet economy has begun to collapse--a process that could jeopardize the pro-Western stance that Gorbachev has maintained over the past two years. This week, Moscow bakeries and stores have run out of bread--a visible and politically volatile situation.

It wasn’t immediately clear how much the United States intends to try to raise in order to help rescue the Soviet economy. Officials said the two sides have discussed only the broad parameters of a possible package so far. Bush and Gorbachev will go further on Sunday.

U.S. officials suggested that if the Soviets proved cooperative in other areas as well, the Administration might go beyond ordinary economic aid, proffering trade benefits to Moscow and helping to raise cash for a fund to stabilize the Soviet ruble if it is made convertible.

Strategists noted Wednesday that if the Soviets were willing to join the international forces now in the Middle East, that would fit into the idea for a new multinational organization to guarantee peace and security in the region outlined by Baker before Congress on Tuesday.

In their last public statement on the subject, the Soviets said they would consider such cooperation if the U.N. Security Council approved the establishment of a multinational force. Seven days after the Iraqi invasion, a Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman said that if the United Nations “takes a decision on the use of a multilateral force, the Soviet Union will, on that basis, work out the line to be followed. . . .”

However, the spokesman added: “At this time, there is no question of taking part in a multinational force or a sea blockade outside the framework of the U.N. Security Council.”

The strategists said the Baker proposal for a broadened NATO-style organization almost certainly would be on the table at Helsinki as well.

Fitzwater had said Tuesday that the Helsinki meeting could provide “a new foundation for world order.” Both leaders “will want to apply new brush strokes” to the picture of an emerging post-Cold War order, he said.

Officials here conceded that there would be at least some initial legal obstacles to providing aid or trade benefits to the Soviet Union. For example, the Soviets would have to enact legislation codifying the past year’s liberalization of the country’s emigration laws.

But Soviet officials have said such moves already are in process, and Gorbachev has signaled that he intends to move further toward a Western-style free-market economic system similar to that outlined recently by Boris N. Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation.

Gorbachev indicated earlier this week that he intends to call the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, back into session about two weeks after the Helsinki summit, partly to consider the new economic program. The emigration legislation could be passed at the same time.

U.S. officials stressed that if the Administration did begin a drive to put together an international aid package for the Soviets, the United States would put up only a small portion of the total on its own. Other Western allies would be asked to bear a share of the burden.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady has begun a whirlwind tour to ask U.S. allies to help foot the bill for part of the U.S. troop deployment in the Middle East. The Europeans have indicated previously that they would be willing to help the Soviets.

One factor supporting Bush in promising aid to Moscow now is that he would have the majority of Congress behind him, at least according to U.S. officials who have made inquiries on the subject there.

Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said congressional reaction to such a proposal “would probably be reasonably favorable” because lawmakers realize that the Persian Gulf venture would have been “very sticky” without Soviet help.

But California Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), another member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, dismissed any suggestion that the United States should offer aid as a reward for Soviet cooperation.

“The reason the Soviet Union is cooperating in the United Nations and this effort to stop Saddam Hussein is this guy represents a direct threat to the Soviet Union,” Berman said. “The Soviet Union is pursuing its own national security interest. They are not doing us some big favor for which they ought to be rewarded.”

Many lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, also remain angry over the continuing presence of Soviet advisers in Iraq--another reason that a Soviet pullout is a bottom-line condition for Bush.

Soviet officials have acknowledged having 193 unarmed advisers in Iraq to teach Iraqis how to use tanks, jet fighters and missiles, as well as to maintain and repair the weapons. They say contractual obligations prevent them from withdrawing the advisers.

Until recently, Moscow had been Iraq’s chief supplier of such weapons.

“Frankly, I think the Soviet Union has been having it both ways,” Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.) told Baker during congressional hearings Wednesday.

“They favor sanctions, and yet they have as many as five to six thousand advisers still in Iraq, many of them economic, some of them military. And I think that they have been using a fig-leaf excuse that they have a contractual obligation to fulfill.”

But Baker replied that U.S. officials are “not entirely sure the extent to which these advisers are, indeed, free to leave. We have said that we think their military advisers certainly should leave if they are free to, and we will continue that--continue to have a dialogue with them about that. We’ve already started it.”

At the White House briefing, however, Fitzwater dismissed the continued presence of the advisers as a “marginal” problem that does not affect the effectiveness of the embargo against Iraq. “There is no sense in getting argumentative with the Soviets on this issue,” Fitzwater said.

The advisers are not the only issue that could impede any Administration effort to provide aid to the Soviets. Some lawmakers remain leery of committing resources until the Soviet Union has demonstrated that it will implement moves toward a free-market system.

Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) said providing money to the Soviet Union amounts to “trying to salvage a boat that has so many leaks in it. You’re just throwing good money after bad” into a “fatally flawed system.”

“In addition,” Hyde said, “I would like to know if they are still pouring rubles into Cuba, Angola and Afghanistan.”

Even so, the increasing possibility that the Administration might change its mind and finally provide aid to the Soviets is beginning to preoccupy official Washington in advance of the Helsinki meeting.

Senior U.S. officials disclosed Wednesday that although they still have not received orders from the White House or State Department, they are beginning to look into ways to speed up final preparation of aid and trade proposals should they be needed.

Times staff writers Douglas Jehl, David Lauter and Art Pine contributed to this report.