Bush Insists That Moscow, Republics Agree on Economy : U.S. aid: He steps up pressure on the Soviets for accord on management and reform. New assistance is delayed.

President Bush on Tuesday stepped up the pressure against the uncontrolled fragmentation of the Soviet Union as he made clear that U.S. aid depends on the Soviet republics’ reaching agreement with the central government on economic management and reform.

After a meeting with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Bush indicated that the United States has postponed a decision to extend further economic aid to Moscow until the new structure is proved both responsible and stable.

“Where we’re talking about credit and we’re talking about hopefully humanitarian assistance, it is important that Americans get the view that the center and the republics are together on these matters,” Bush said.

The decision to defer even the $1.25-billion package of humanitarian aid that was to have been announced after the Bush-Gorbachev meeting reflected the degree to which the political upheaval in the Soviet Union has left its relations with the United States on an uncertain, unsettled plane.

Apart from a decision to coordinate steps toward disarmament, the two leaders appeared to have reached no specific agreements in their meeting. They spoke in unusually bland, general terms during a joint news conference that followed.

Instead, the meeting gave Gorbachev the chance to assure Bush that the Soviet Union is back on a course toward political and economic reform after the conservative coup d’etat in August. Bush, in turn, was able to promise Gorbachev his continuing support.

“I’m very happy to see my friend again and to have had very fruitful discussions that have not in any way been altered by the tragic coup attempt last summer,” Bush said.

Yet he clearly felt unable to announce even a general agreement to provide the Soviet Union with more credits to buy U.S. grain under a plan designed to avert food shortages this winter. White House officials had described the planned announcement as an important gesture of U.S. support for Gorbachev. Its postponement can only diminish his standing at home, where his authority depends increasingly on his ability to attract outside help.

Bush’s senior advisers had warned him that it would be foolhardy to extend further credit to the Soviet Union unless there was a clear agreement among independent-minded republics about how the loans would be repaid.

In describing his conversation with the Soviet leader, Bush said he had pressed Gorbachev, but “we’re in a phase of discussing details.” Bush cautioned that the two sides needed “further work and consultation.”

Gorbachev appeared to accept Bush’s reasons for putting off the aid package but still appeared eager to convince the United States that the Soviet Union was finally beginning economic reforms that are worthy of Western support.

“I felt it necessary to report to him the most important thought--that we now have come up through this stage and now are actually beginning to make realistic concrete steps” in establishing a market economy, Gorbachev said.

In stressing that the Soviet Union is now beginning what he called a “very specific process,” Gorbachev said prices will be freed from state controls and the government budget deficit will be reduced. With each pledge, he appeared determined to convince the West that his government had now met the conditions for additional aid.

“All of our society is now faced with a rather complex set of decisions,” he said. “This (is) the precise moment when we are especially sensitive to what we are doing in our country, and we feel sensitively what the attitude is of all our partners abroad.”

The talks between the two leaders followed an agreement in Moscow among the Soviet Union’s 12 remaining republics to accept joint responsibility for repayment of the country’s $65 billion in foreign debt. Deputy finance ministers from the West’s Group of Seven leading industrial nations had warned the republics that they would receive no further loans or even economic assistance without such a pact.

Gorbachev appeared to point to the agreement as a symbol of emerging “solidarity” among the republics in their effort to preserve the integrity of the Soviet economy through a common market while establishing their political independence. Bush Administration officials later expressed hope that such an agreement could serve as a framework for an accord among the republics to accept responsibility for U.S. loans included in any package of humanitarian aid.

“We’re trying to figure out to whom you would lend money and what kind of assurances you would get from them,” a senior Administration official said.

The meeting between the two leaders, their third in four months, differed most markedly from previous superpower summits in its focus on developments in the Soviet Union, particularly in the wake of the August putsch. The hastily arranged session, on the eve of the U.S.- and Soviet-sponsored Middle East peace conference, served in part as a chance for the two nations to “synchronize our watches,” as Gorbachev described it.

But it was clear that the conversation also took on the tone of an interrogation, as Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III put forward what Gorbachev called a “whole series of questions . . . to try to find out where we now are in the Soviet Union and to get a better grasp of what kind of issues and problems we’re trying to solve.”

While declaring his support for Gorbachev, Bush also stressed U.S. intentions to remain in contact with republic leaders, notably Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Bush avoided direct criticism of the Ukraine, which has so far refused to join even the new economic community. Senior Bush Administration officials last week sharply criticized the Ukraine’s plans to establish a 420,000-man army and to retain possession of the substantial nuclear arsenal now based in its territory.

The meeting between Bush and Gorbachev at the brand-new Soviet Embassy here ran about 45 minutes longer than its scheduled 75 minutes, but it was still one of the shortest encounters between the two leaders. Bush and Gorbachev spoke further Tuesday night at a four-person dinner hosted by King Juan Carlos I and attended by Spanish President Felipe Gonzalez.