U.S. Seeks Soviet Contacts Beyond Top Kremlin Circle : Diplomacy: With the republics becoming more independent, Washington looks to their leaders.

In a subtle but significant shift of policy, the United States is quietly moving to expand its contacts with Soviet leaders and opinion makers beyond the immediate circle of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The move reflects a feeling by top policy-makers in Washington that with individual Soviet republics becoming more and more independent and the central government gradually ceding power, Washington must begin dealing with a wider circle than it has.

“It is clear that no longer are all the important people only in the Kremlin,” a senior Bush Administration official said, explaining the more open U.S. approach. “We need to know the range of opinion in the country and its potential successor generation.”

At the same time, a wide-ranging intelligence review has begun to examine the consequences for the United States of a breakup of the Soviet Union--and the possible unseating of Gorbachev as the country’s leader.

U.S. officials are not predicting any full-fledged shift away from Gorbachev soon. “We’ve still got important international business to do with Gorbachev--arms control treaties, trade agreements, Persian Gulf cooperation,” one said. “It’s a fact of life that he is the Soviet head of state.”

But they are saying that Washington ought to be better positioned, both to keep current with these trends and to deal with emerging Soviet leaders--if only to maintain some influence in whatever events may be unfolding.

“The Soviet Union is in transition, toward what no one knows,” a senior State Department official said. “We’re trying to keep up with the curve.”

The new mood is in sharp contrast to that evident only six months ago, when Bush Administration officials were concerned that any smiles upon Gorbachev’s rivals might undermine his authority in Moscow and cripple his ability to keep the 15 constituent republics intact.

Last year, for example, when Gorbachev’s main rival, Boris N. Yeltsin, came to Washington, senior Bush aides openly lamented his decision to visit here. The volatile politician was kept waiting at the White House gate and later derided by presidential staffers.

Since then, however, Yeltsin has become the highly popular president of the Russian Federation, and last month White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu paid him a courtesy call in Moscow.

Other Soviet visitors are receiving warmer and more visible treatment in Washington as well. Only last week, Anatoly Sobchat, Leningrad’s radical mayor, met with Secretary of State James A. Baker III and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and later saw Bush himself briefly. And just last month, Baker met with Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov, another radical.

But despite the increasing U.S. openness, critics said Administration policy is not changing fast enough or deeply enough to reflect the growing “Balkanization” of the Soviet Union.

“They are no longer calling Yeltsin a drunk and womanizer (as some have charged),” said Jeremy R. Azrael, a RAND Corp. analyst in Santa Monica, “but we still don’t have a consulate in Kiev, and no official presence in the Caucasus (where ethnic violence and armed clashes have produced near anarchy).

“We just don’t know these folks,” he insisted.

A former CIA analyst, Azrael contended that the Soviet Union is in a “terminal” crisis that has “momentous implications” for U.S. interests. But to date, he said, Washington has made “almost no effort” to try to influence those developments.

Dmitri Simes, a Soviet specialist with the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed, adding that the new U.S. posture is only a reactive adjustment.

“It is not a new policy if you just receive people at a slightly higher level, with slightly greater dignity,” he cautioned.

Azrael argued that the current U.S. policy review ought to consider far broader issues, among them: How confident can the United States be, with Gorbachev losing influence, that the Kremlin will continue to be able to deliver on arms control, trade and other commitments?

He said Washington also ought to be pondering how certain it is--with disarray in the Soviet military and KGB secret police--that the Kremlin will be able to maintain exclusive control of Soviet nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

Azrael argued that not only should more U.S. diplomats go out in the field, but also that the Pentagon ought to be broadening and deepening its contacts with the Soviet military.

“We should know the phone numbers of Soviet missile commanders out in Siberia, to ask them what they think of things, not just talk to (Soviet Chief of Staff Mikhail S.) Moiseyev and the Soviet Ministry of Defense in Moscow,” he contended.

U.S. officials say they already are moving in this direction, with plans to set up new diplomatic posts in the Soviet hinterland, where future leaders of the fast-fragmenting country may be emerging.

Right now, the United States has official diplomatic posts only in Moscow and Leningrad. It has had longstanding plans, now awaiting congressional approval, to set up an office in Kiev, where demonstrators recently forced the resignation of the Ukrainian prime minister.

The State Department is planning to open a new office in Muslim Central Asia, either in Tashkent or Alma Ata; in the Caucasus, probably in Tbilisi, Georgia, to cover that republic as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in the Pacific Far East, at Vladivostok or Khabarovsk.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow also wants a larger staff to increase visits to Siberian cities and hot spots in Soviet Europe, such as Kishinev in Moldova.

So far, the Soviets have been “receptive” to the idea of expanding U.S. representation, a State Department official said, although they would undoubtedly want reciprocal consular rights in such cities as Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

“They recognize that it’s critical to their efforts to attract foreign economic investment that we have access to republic centers and regions where the investment would go,” the senior Bush Administration official said.

“Even the Soviet Embassy here in Washington now has a man who is ‘dual-hatted,’ one dealing with republic affairs, the other with Soviet affairs,” he added.

The republics, especially Russia, are being assertive in claiming rights that were once the unquestioned domain of the Soviet central government and making signs that they will want their own bilateral agreements on trade and joint ventures with foreign countries.

Yeltsin, for example, has complained that last year’s U.S.-Soviet agreement to divide Arctic maritime resources was not a good deal and that he may want to renegotiate it. He also has said he wants a role in talks with Japan over the disputed Kuril Islands.

This emerging competition between the central and regional authorities has created new problems for U.S. diplomats.

“Our position is to deal jointly with both the Soviet government and the republican governments, but we say they should settle the question of who is pre-eminent,” the U.S. official said.