U.S. Cautions Ukraine on Its Military Plans

The Bush Administration, alarmed that the Soviet Union’s second-largest republic might seek control of nuclear weapons on its territory, warned Friday that the United States will not recognize or aid an independent Ukraine if it tries to become a major military power.

Two officials said in separate interviews that the Administration is becoming increasingly concerned over the Ukraine’s plans to declare independence, raise an army of 420,000 troops and assert at least partial control over the Soviet nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil.

“We have no intention of recognizing them,” one official said when asked how the United States would respond to Ukrainian independence. “ . . . We just won’t do it.”

“Just because a state is peeling off from the Soviet Union doesn’t mean it has an automatic call on our help,” another senior official said. “We’re going to have a hard time dealing with any state as long as it’s . . . trying to build a big army and pursuing fairly conservative economic policies.”

Their comments appeared intended as a pointed warning to the Ukraine’s independence-minded Parliament to slow its drive for complete secession from Moscow.

But one official acknowledged that, as central authority disintegrates in the Soviet Union, the United States may be forced to recognize an independent Ukraine whether it wants to or not.

“The place is just falling apart,” the official said. “So we may be faced with an accomplished fact that we can’t run away from.”

U.S. officials have warned for months that complete independence for the Ukraine--with a population of 52 million and a territory larger than France--would doom any chance of maintaining a confederation among the remaining Soviet republics. And they have been worried that a Ukrainian state hostile to its neighbors, Poland and Russia, could destabilize much of Eastern Europe.

Those worries increased last week when the Ukraine refused to sign an economic pact with eight other Soviet republics and when the Ukrainian Parliament voted to raise a 420,000-man army--a force that would be larger than Germany’s ground forces.

The Parliament on Thursday declared its intention to destroy all nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory, but it also said that the Ukraine should share control over the warheads with the central government in Moscow.

Estimates of the number of long-range nuclear missiles stationed in the Ukraine range from 116 to 200--numbers that would make the republic the world’s third-largest nuclear power, after the United States and the Soviet Union.

“That’s the nightmare,” one U.S. official said.

The United States wants all of the Soviet republics to give Moscow exclusive control over nuclear weapons to prevent the possible formation of a series of independent nuclear forces.

“We’ve made it very clear to them that it would be a serious, serious mistake to believe that this supposed ownership of nuclear weapons would get them a seat at any international forum,” a senior official said.

Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk “got that message in spades” when he visited President Bush at the White House last month, he added.

But Kravchuk and other Ukrainian leaders have continued to make contradictory statements about their nuclear intentions, he complained. “They just don’t understand the nature of the problem.”

The Ukraine has scheduled a Dec. 1 referendum on independence.

The toughening U.S. position in opposition to the secession of the Ukraine reflects a concerted effort by the Administration to shore up Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s efforts to maintain at least a loose confederation among the Soviet republics.

“The onus is on us to prop him up,” the official said.

In recent months, another official said wryly, the United States has been “more Soviet than the Soviets.”

In another reflection of the disintegration of the Soviet state--and the Bush Administration’s cautious response--Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin telephoned Bush on Friday afternoon to outline a major economic reform plan he intends to announce next week.

A White House official said Bush had no strong reaction to Yeltsin’s plan, which was described only in general terms. “He liked what he heard, but he didn’t hear much,” the official said.

Another senior official complained that U.S. hopes for helping Soviet economic reforms have been largely stymied by the confusion over whether the central government, the republics or new “inter-republican” organizations will be in charge of implementing the new policies.

“It’s no longer a question of an economically feasible plan--it’s a question of politics,” he said.

The senior officials said Bush is unlikely to respond to a Gorbachev request for a reported $3.5 billion in economic aid at the two presidents’ summit meeting Tuesday in Madrid.

“We just got the request and we’re still chewing on it,” he said, adding that the Administration speeded up work on smaller amounts of humanitarian aid and grain credits for the Soviet Union “to give us some breathing space.”

Bush, at a news conference Friday, said he will be ready to discuss Soviet economic reforms and nuclear arms control at the summit, but added that he will not be carrying any specific disarmament proposals.

“I’m sure we’ll discuss bilateral issues, and I’ll be prepared to discuss nuclear weapons; I’ll be prepared to discuss their economy and ours,” Bush said. “I’ll be prepared to discuss anything that he’s interested in.

“But . . . I don’t want to leave the impression that we’re coming forth with a new four-point program or six-point program” on nuclear weapons, he added.

Bush and Gorbachev will be in Madrid primarily to open the Middle East peace conference that is scheduled to begin Wednesday under joint U.S.-Soviet sponsorship.

“The peoples of this region still have enormous differences, but I want to commend the statesmanship of the leaders of all those parties attending the peace conference,” Bush said. “Sitting down together is the beginning of understanding.”

Times staff writer John-Thor Dahlburg, in Moscow, contributed to this report.