World Bank Boosts Its Loans to Eastern Europe : Development: Poland will get $680 million, the rest of the area up to $1.5 billion. The aim is to ensure a successful shift to a market economy.

The World Bank, stepping up its assistance to the formerly communist republics of Eastern Europe, announced Wednesday that it has extended $680 million in loans to Poland and that it expects to offer an additional $1.5 billion to projects in the region in coming weeks.

The loans are targeted at projects the bank believes are crucial to helping those nations make the difficult conversion from government-run to market economies. They range from $400 million in support for rural cooperatives in Poland, to $175 million to be spent on technical assistance and critical imports in Romania, to $300 million for Yugoslavia’s Kolubara thermal station.

“Our underlying strategy is one of supporting and possibly accelerating the progress of reforms in these countries,” said Eugenio F. Lari, director of the World Bank’s European Department.

Yet such pledges are scant reassurance to many in Eastern Europe, who in recent weeks have begun to feel less certain of the West’s commitment to helping them make painful reforms. As the Soviet Union edges closer to what appears to be an economic abyss, they fear that the industrial nations’ attention--and their money--will be diverted from countries in Eastern Europe that are further along in reforming their economies.

Their uneasiness was compounded Tuesday with Washington’s announcement that it will grant $1.5 billion in U.S. food credits to Moscow, which means that American farmers will be selling the Soviets grain that traditionally has been supplied from the East Bloc farm belt.

The Soviet Union’s financial difficulties have led to a virtual collapse in trade with its former allies. As a result, huge surpluses of grain, meat and other foods are languishing in Eastern Europe’s warehouses because Moscow lacks the money to buy from its traditional suppliers.

“The Polish side was well advanced in negotiations with the Soviets concerning sale of Polish surplus grain,” said Karol Gebka, spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry in Warsaw. “We expect the Soviets now to toughen their stance and that will complicate our situation.”

At a conference last week in the Czechoslovakian spa town of Bardejov, Eastern European leaders asked the United States, Japan and Western Europe to be wary of programs that would aid the Soviet Union at Eastern Europe’s expense.

Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland argued that the West should devote its resources to rewarding reforms already undertaken rather than the Kremlin’s vague promises to follow suit later. Vice President Dan Quayle assured the reform front-runners that their concerns would not be overlooked in U.S. consideration of Soviet needs.

Yet pressure for massive assistance continues to mount. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will be arguing his case with Western leaders who have invited him to meet with them during next month’s economic summit in London.

And on Wednesday, Jacques Attali, president of the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, urged the bank’s 39 member nations to drop their insistence upon a loan ceiling for the Soviet Union.

More money is crucial, Attali said, “if we want to push the Soviet Union in the direction of the private sector.”

The United States and other nations that are members of the newly created European bank, an international bank coordinating aid to Eastern Europe, have warned that if the Soviet borrowing appetite is unchecked by lending limits, it could devour resources needed by other countries. They also caution that it could lead Moscow to rely on foreign assistance rather than economic reform.

The Soviet Union has also expressed interest in membership in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the leading suppliers of aid to Eastern Europe. Thus far, the United States, the biggest shareholder in both institutions, has been willing to discuss only an associate member status for Moscow, which would give the Soviets access to technical expertise, but no money.

Treasury Undersecretary David Mulford said Wednesday that it probably will take more than two years before the Soviets qualify for full membership.

Moscow’s recent efforts to come up with an economic reform strategy represent “progress in their thinking,” Mulford told a House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs subcommittee. But he added: “Their program needs to be developed further.”

Meanwhile, both institutions have picked up the pace of their assistance to Eastern Europe. The IMF has extended $8.4 billion to the region this year, while the World Bank expects to have approved $2.9 billion--six times its 1989 total--by the end of its fiscal year June 30.

Tumulty reported from Washington and Williams from Budapest.