Mixed Signals From Kremlin on Aid Plea : Reform: Contradicting Gorbachev, the premier says no new economic program will be presented to the West.

Soviet Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov said Wednesday that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will not have a new program of radical economic reform to show Western leaders this month when he seeks international assistance for the Soviet Union.

Pavlov’s declaration undercut Gorbachev in advance of his planned presentation after the summit conference of the Group of Seven major industrial democracies--even as the president’s envoys were leaving for world capitals to brief foreign leaders on his ideas in advance of the meeting.

“I am not aware that President Gorbachev is preparing an economic program that he will be carrying to London,” Pavlov said, contradicting Gorbachev. The president had said he would present his own plan for economic recovery, combining the government’s “anti-crisis” program with a radical proposal for a fast transition to a free market economy.

“We must fulfill one program first,” Pavlov said, stressing that this program was the government’s, not that of his radical critics. “It is high time we stop producing programs and start implementing them . . . .

“Gorbachev is not working on any program, especially a new program for his trip to London, at least not that I know of.”

Pavlov’s comments at a news conference set off a scramble within the government to minimize the damage done by another of the prime minister’s frank assertions--that the Soviet Union should forget about Western assistance and proceed with the tough tasks involved in remaking its economy, relying on its own resources.

Yevgeny M. Primakov, the president’s foreign policy adviser, said in an interview with the government newspaper Izvestia that Gorbachev was indeed working with a number of economic advisers to draft “a speech of a conceptual nature” for the London meeting, using both the government’s economic program and the radical proposal drafted by Grigory A. Yavlinsky, one of Gorbachev’s economic advisers.

“I think (Gorbachev) will go to London not with the Yavlinsky or any other program but one of his own,” Primakov said. “Yet, I would not call it a program. He goes there not to make a report but to share his thoughts. It seems to me that there will be no program in the generally accepted meaning. There will be conceptual ideas that will throw light on the directions we will choose.”

Vitaly N. Churkin, the chief spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, told correspondents that Gorbachev, and no one else, will decide what program is presented in London.

“We all know who the boss is,” Churkin said.

Yet another presidential aide said that Gorbachev was surprised and annoyed by the prime minister’s comments, feeling that they were confusing the issues both at home and abroad. “We’ve got a loose cannon rolling about,” the official said, asking not to be quoted by name. “We are either going to have to lash him down or drop him overboard.”

Although Soviet economic commentators contrast the government’s program--for a step-by-step transition to a free market economy--with the Yavlinsky proposal to accelerate the process with Western support, Primakov described them as coinciding on 90% of the issues.

“Their being counter-posed to each other often stems from the personalities (of their authors),” he added, referring to Pavlov’s and Yavlinsky’s much-publicized antipathy toward each other.

Primakov left for Tokyo on Wednesday to brief Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu on the Soviet Union’s economic crisis and the ideas that Gorbachev will present at the London summit.

Yavlinsky had flown to London on Tuesday as the start of a trip that will also take him to Paris, Bonn and Rome to explain the role that Western assistance would play in the Soviet Union’s transition to a free market economy.

Pavlov, expressing his doubts that Western countries will provide the $15 billion to $30 billion a year called for in the radicals’ proposal for an accelerated transformation of the Soviet economy, said his government will make its plans only on the basis of what the country can do itself.

“You can’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Pavlov said. “It will be all right if the West gives us the money, but otherwise we will have ourselves to rely on, asking for loans and investments. . . .

“Our own program is based on the principle of a transition to a market economy and the elimination of our problems, regardless of any help we receive from the West.”