Gorbachev Sets Date for Pact Signing : Soviet Union: Leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will accept the new Union Treaty on Aug. 20. Others can do so later.

Trying to woo this country’s rebellious nationalities back into the Soviet fold, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced Friday that the formal signing of a new federal power-sharing agreement will commence Aug. 20 but that republics can adhere later if they want.

“The new Union Treaty will help overcome the crisis and bring our life to normal,” Gorbachev, looking wan and reportedly about to embark on his annual summer vacation, told the nation in an evening television address.

In his 15-minute speech, he confirmed a bit of information already leaked by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin: the treaty will be opened for signing Aug. 20. Russia and Kazakhstan, the biggest republics in terms of area, will sign first, along with the Central Asian land of Uzbekistan, Gorbachev announced. Yeltsin said the ceremony will take place at the Kremlin.

But later, “after set periods,” other republics will be allowed to sign, Gorbachev said. He specifically mentioned that this step-by-step process will allow the Ukrainian legislature to hold its planned review of the pact, Armenians to vote in a Sept. 21 referendum on independence, and Moldova, riven by ethnic conflicts, to finally make a decision.

“The peoples of Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will also be able to determine their position on this vital matter,” Gorbachev said, showing that he has not yet given up hope of persuading even those republics now bent on total independence from Moscow to join his new union. Gorbachev said he has written their leaders but gave no details.

Holding out hope to a citizenry weary of near-chaos in the economy and political life, Gorbachev said the proposed treaty “creates the prerequisites for profound changes for the better in all spheres of social and state life, and one can expect that its positive effect will begin to make itself felt in the near future.”

The Union Treaty, the final result of hard-fought negotiations between Gorbachev and the leaders of nine of the republics, awards more powers than ever to local authorities to shape economic and social policy, but reserves large functions for the central government, including in the defense and security spheres, the coining of money and the maintenance of a single economic space.

President Bush, touring Kiev on the last day of his visit to the Soviet Union, endorsed Gorbachev’s formula for holding the nation together, cautioning the republics Thursday not to embark on a “hopeless course of isolation.” But many critics of the treaty say it concentrates too much power in Moscow.

“Even the majority of our Supreme Soviet--and 22% are high-level Communist Party secretaries--will not sign,” said Mykola Borovsky, a member of the Ukrainian legislature and a leader of Rukh, the republic’s grass-roots pro-independence movement. The Ukraine’s leaders are among those who have indicated that they will sign the treaty, although the legislature has deferred a decision.

Borovsky objected specifically to the Treaty’s Article 11, which gives national laws priority over those of the republics. Echoing a common complaint of activists in the outlying republics, he accused Moscow of milking the Ukraine’s economy.

“The (Ukrainian government) budget this year is 27 billion rubles,” Borovsky said. “One hundred billion rubles are being skimmed off enterprises by central authorities. They are taking at least four times what they leave us.”