National Agenda : Moscow Seeks New Prestige as Superpower of Peacemakers : * Mediator’s role at the Mideast peace talks raised Soviet hopes of regaining global influence. But some call it camouflage for the nation’s decline.

“Russia the conciliator.”

The phrase was originally suggested by an adviser to one of the Arab delegations at the Middle East peace conference here last week, and Vladimir Lukin, a member of the Soviet delegation, was clearly savoring it.

“It’s a new role for us, but a good one,” said Lukin, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian Federation’s Parliament. “Isn’t it time that the world thought of Russia as a positive force in international affairs--and had real reason for doing so?”

While the United States was the true organizer of the Madrid conference and intends to follow closely the continuing negotiations, the Soviet Union sees an emerging role for itself as mediator when the bargaining gets tough and compromise seems impossible.

“As a former superpower, our position in the Middle East has changed fundamentally,” said Vitaly Naumkin, deputy director of the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies. “Precisely because no superpower ambitions can be attributed to us, because we no longer have allies or clients there, we can give friendly advice to everyone.”

To Western diplomats, such an idea is little more than an attempt to salvage what remains of the Soviet Union’s once-extensive influence across the Arab world. They describe Soviet co-sponsorship of the Madrid conference as camouflage for the real U.S. dominance here and for Moscow’s own decline.

Regardless, the Soviet Union is recasting its foreign policy not only in the Middle East but throughout the world. And it is reshaping the way that policy is made.

“The changes that we are going through as a country and as a state are going to alter in very fundamental ways our whole foreign policy, starting with the Middle East,” Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the U.S.A. Institute, a leading Soviet think tank, said in an interview in Moscow.

“As the Soviet Union, we had one set of interests, goals and priorities; as an emerging confederation of states centered on Russia and the Central Asian republics, we will have a different set. As a superpower, we proceeded in a certain well-known manner; in the future, we will have quite a different style.”

And the “Madrid process,” as Soviet diplomats are now calling what will probably be prolonged and perhaps spasmodic Arab-Israeli negotiations, is likely to have a major impact on Moscow’s foreign policy globally.

“To my mind it is very fortuitous that, at this crucial point in the evolution of our foreign policy, we are put in the position of a mediator, a conciliator, an honest broker,” a senior Soviet diplomat said. “We have happily given up our role as a superpower, but the question is before us: ‘What is our new role in the world?’

“The Madrid process could be the crossroads where we turn toward peacemaking and undertake as a major element of our foreign policy concrete efforts to help create the ‘new world order’ we have been speaking of. We often speak of resolving problems based on a ‘balance of interests,’ but how can this be applied, for example, in the Arab-Israeli conflict?”

Complicating the situation, the fragmentation of the Soviet Union is driving its republics to assert the right, as part of their newly proclaimed sovereignty, to shape Soviet foreign policy--or even to develop their own.

In the Middle East, the giant Russian Federation led by Boris N. Yeltsin is already promoting closer ties with Israel as a major center of Russian emigration, as a religious center for the Russian Orthodox Church and as a trading partner able to offer high-tech products at lower prices.

The predominantly Muslim republics of Soviet Central Asia are rapidly developing relations with the Arab world, notably Saudi Arabia. Russia moreover would like to coordinate its oil policy, including production and export levels, with the Arab oil producers, its rivals in the international market. And many Arab countries remain good customers for Soviet products.

But Moscow has decided to reduce its arms sales to the region, probably in conjunction with the Madrid conference and in agreement with Washington and the other major sellers.

Boris D. Pankin, the Soviet foreign minister, expressed hope here last week that there could even be a complete halt. “We don’t want the kind of influence that comes from arms sales,” Pankin said in an interview with Russian television.

“In the context of our old policy--unquestioning support of the Arabs, opposition to Israel--this is a totally new approach, but one that is clearly schizophrenic,” Kremenyuk commented. “At this point, both our foreign policy and the way that it is made are changing, and we are uncertain what will emerge. The Middle East will be a first effort at this new way of policy-making.”

Naumkin, an adviser to the Soviet delegation to the peace conference, said that the central government in Moscow under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev needs to re-establish itself quickly as the coordinator, if not the maker, of foreign policy.

“If not, then we will have a Russian foreign policy, a Kirghiz foreign policy, an Azerbaijani foreign policy, and none will have impact,” he said. “Success now will show the republics that the central government is necessary and can do something right.”

But the central government’s policies must be able to win the support of those republics--perhaps just Russia and seven or eight others out of the previous 15--that remain in what is expected to be a loosely structured federation of independent states.

“Our basic interest in the Middle East is peace and stability, and that we all should be able to agree on,” Naumkin said. “We want a quiet Middle East with no problems, no reason for adventures by any party. The question is, how do we promote this? The Madrid talks will test our ability to be peacemakers, even as junior partners to the U.S.”

Naumkin and other Soviet specialists on the region assert that Moscow retains considerable influence there from its decades of friendship with most Arab states and has increased its standing with the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel last month.

“The Soviet Union is now accepted by everyone in the region,” Naumkin said. “We face hostility from no one--not Israel, not any of the Arab countries, not the U.S. This is new.

“Because of our much different relationship with the United States today, we are viewed as a counterbalance, and welcomed as such even by Israel, without being a rival. And that is new.”

But to Galia Golan, the leading Israeli specialist on Soviet policy in the Mideast, this all sounds “like making a virtue of necessity.”

“They are almost out of the game and trying to get back in,” Golan said during a visit to Moscow last month. “Soviet influence is absolutely minimal these days. Without arms sales, it could disappear entirely among Arab states. Moscow can only play a significant role by following and supporting the U.S., and the Americans found it useful, perhaps comforting, to have the Soviets in Madrid.

“That doesn’t add up to a policy. The Soviet Union may emerge from the Madrid process with a Mideast policy--it’s a learning-by-doing exercise for everyone--but their days as a major player ended with their status as a superpower.”

Zuheir Diab, a prominent Syrian political analyst who is advising his country’s delegation at the peace talks, argued that Soviet influence in the Middle East remains “strong despite the changes in Moscow and the different political environment. These are old ties, and they won’t disappear quickly.”

“The Soviet Union’s days as a superpower would appear to be over, and we should not see it as our nuclear Big Brother always protecting us against the U.S. But it should never have assumed that role, and we should not have allowed it because it turned the Middle East into an arena of superpower rivalry.

“Where we should benefit now,” Diab continued, “is from the support of a proven friend who has new ideas and new approaches to old problems.”