Speed the Pace of Change by Freeing Baltic States, Bush Urges Gorbachev : Foreign relations: Almost nothing would do more to attract American goodwill, the President declares. Gorbachev is described as ‘weakened’ after coup.

President Bush, pressing newly restored Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to seize the moment and accelerate the process of change in the Soviet Union, on Thursday called for immediate freedom for the Baltic states.

“In my view, that would do more to enhance good will in the United States than almost any other single thing that could be done,” Bush declared after a lunchtime meeting with Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

At the same time, senior Administration officials privately expressed dismay at early indications that Gorbachev may instead return to his pattern of trying to work with hard-liners, instead of sweeping them from the Kremlin after the failed coup.

The pointed prodding came as the Administration began to put distance between itself and what officials described privately as a “weakened” Gorbachev, and to pay new deference to Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, widely regarded as the key to future power in the Soviet Union.

Bush, speaking to reporters at his seaside vacation home, insisted that Gorbachev’s decisions are “not for us to second-guess.” But senior officials, noting privately that the failure of the coup should have freed the Soviet leader to step up the pace of reform, said that, instead, “the first signs have been cautious.”

In particular, U.S. officials said they are uneasy about Gorbachev’s decision to turn over the Soviet military, the KGB and other crucial agencies to men who are close associates of the leading coup plotters.

The mixed signals from the Administration--a combination of public praise and private criticism--were a reflection of the awkward task the White House faces as it seeks to offer direction to a man so recently freed from house arrest.

The call for independence in the Baltics is part of an ambitious Administration agenda for Soviet reform that senior U.S. officials said should also include a cut-off of aid to Cuba and the setting of a firm date for popular election of the Soviet president.

Officials also called on Gorbachev to rein in the Soviet military and to move more quickly toward adoption of a free-market economy.

The blunt statements by Administration officials reflect a view that Gorbachev, his right-wing opponents now discredited, will never have a better opportunity to take bold and imaginative action.

If he misses that chance, the officials said, he risks becoming increasingly irrelevant. “Gorbachev is being swept along; soon he will be swept away,” said one senior Soviet specialist at the Pentagon.

In a slap at one of the first decisions taken by Gorbachev after his return to power, a senior Administration official expressed surprise at the appointment of conservative Gen. Mikhail A. Moiseyev as the new Soviet defense minister.

“I wouldn’t want that guy behind me in a dark hall now,” the official said of Moiseyev, whose role in opposing Gorbachev’s ouster was described by U.S. officials as, at best, “ambivalent.” (Gorbachev, in a news conference, flatly said that Moiseyev did not participate in the coup.)

Other officials expressed disappointment at statements made by Gorbachev during his news conference Thursday in which he defended both the Communist Party and Soviet Parliament Speaker Anatoly Lukyanov, who was believed to have been involved in the failed coup.

“That was almost surreal,” one official said.

In going out of his way to urge independence for the Baltic states, Bush sought to quicken the pace on an issue deeply sensitive to Moscow but also regarded as a vital signal of the Soviet commitment to reform.

The request from the President marked a partial endorsement of the new declarations of independence by Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia this week during what appeared to be the darkest hours of the right-wing takeover in Moscow.

But State Department officials, who met Thursday with the chiefs of the U.S. legations of the three republics, later said the Administration was unlikely to act on its own to change the Baltics’ murky diplomatic status any time soon.

One official noted that the U.S. criteria for recognizing the independence of a state is whether the authorities have full control over their population and territory, whether they have the ability to make and keep international agreements and whether they enjoy other internationally accepted attributes of sovereignty.

“As a practical matter, those conditions do not exist” in the Baltic republics, the official said. “This does not detract from the fact that we will do everything we can to help them achieve those aspirations.”

The United States has never recognized the forced incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the Soviet Union in 1940. For months, Washington has sought to persuade Moscow that the Soviet Union would not be harmed by the creation of “three little Finlands” on its border.

But until the remarks by Bush on Thursday, U.S. officials had spoken indirectly of the Baltic right to self-determination and carefully stopped short of any explicit call for independence.

In urging Gorbachev to resume his path to reform, Bush announced that he would immediately restore the package of economic aid frozen by the Administration as a sign of its opposition to the coup.

But officials said there were no plans to boost the amount of that aid or to offer any separate package of humanitarian assistance to the Soviet people. In dismissing reports that an aid increase had been planned, a senior official said such an effort had been discussed only at staff levels in the Administration.

The restoration of Gorbachev to power was expected to simplify the task of Robert S. Strauss, the new U.S. ambassador to Moscow who was dispatched to the Soviet Union early this week with instructions to meet only in an emergency with the coup planners. One official said Strauss is likely to present his credentials to Gorbachev before returning to the United States to report to Bush next week.

Bush made clear, however, that the resumption of the direct relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union would stop short of certain military-to-military contacts--a signal of continuing American uneasiness with Moscow’s military leadership.