West Urged to End Support of Gorbachev : Soviet Union: The mayor of Moscow compares his president to a ‘burned-out star’ and says democratic forces should be backed instead.

Comparing Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to a “burned-out star” whose light can be seen from afar long after it disintegrates, Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov said Tuesday that the West should stop supporting the embattled leader and channel aid to republics and cities where democratic forces have gained control.

Popov, a reformist who won Moscow’s first-ever citywide democratic election last year, said Americans continue to consider Gorbachev an engine for change long after he has thrown in his lot with the military, the KGB and reactionary forces.

He said history will honor Gorbachev for “remarkable achievements” but will record that the period of reform ended late last year.

Popov said Gorbachev’s crackdown on the independence-minded Baltic republics shocked the West only because it was inconsistent “not with the real man, but the image.”

“It took those tanks in Vilnius for Americans to realize what was happening, although last year, those same tanks were in Baku and many more people were killed,” Popov told a small group of reporters. If the West had paid more attention to Gorbachev’s earlier actions, “it would not be such a surprise what he is doing now,” he said.

So far, Popov said, the West has participated in the Soviet economy primarily by lending money to enterprises controlled by the Gorbachev regime.

In the future, he said, Western nations should support reform and democracy in the Soviet Union by assisting non-government enterprises and local governments “where the democratic forces have a majority.” Moscow, Leningrad and Boris N. Yeltsin’s Russian Federation would benefit if the United States took Popov’s advice.

“The first thing the West should do is take a sober assessment of the situation in the Soviet Union,” he said.

Popov said he is concerned that the United States, disillusioned by the crackdown in the Baltics and preoccupied with the war in the Persian Gulf, will simply ignore events in the Soviet Union.

Moreover, he said, the war itself may damage the cause of Soviet democracy.

“It will force the Western countries to make deals with conservative forces in the Soviet Union,” he said, possibly including a promise from Washington to end its support for Soviet reformists.

Popov, visiting the United States at the invitation of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), conferred Tuesday with Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Although the U.S. government usually deals with Gorbachev and the Soviet government, the Bush Administration has made a few tentative efforts to build bridges to Popov and other opposition leaders. Baker also conferred with Popov last year when he was in Moscow for talks with then-Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said Popov gave Baker “a fairly lengthy overview” of events in the Soviet Union. She said they also discussed Western aid and the situation in the Baltics.

Popov predicted that Gorbachev and his conservative allies will stop all reform efforts in their tracks within a year. He said the Soviet president seems to have concluded “that order will be enough, and there will be no need for reform.”

Nevertheless, Popov said right-wing factions will not be able to roll back reforms that have already been adopted.

“Democratic forces are not strong enough to create a democratic regime, but they are strong enough to impede the conservative forces from establishing theirs . . . if the democrats don’t blunder and the West doesn’t blunder,” he said.

Popov said Bush was justified in postponing a summit meeting with Gorbachev that had been scheduled for next month.

“It would have been very difficult for the democratic forces to understand if the summit had taken place,” he said.