Soviets May Face a Liquidity Crisis : Trade: Western officials will discuss reports that the U.S.S.R. is running out of money to pay foreign debt.

Amid reports that the Soviet Union may be on the brink of running out of hard currency to make debt payments, representatives of the West’s leading industrial powers will meet in Paris today to discuss options for dealing with a potential liquidity crisis, sources said Tuesday.

The independent Soviet news agency Interfax quoted a senior official of the Soviet Foreign Economic Relations Bank, or Vneshekonombank, as predicting that the central government may face a shortfall of 1 billion rubles, worth about $1.7 billion at the official rate of exchange.

“In the next few days, most likely in mid-November, the U.S.S.R. could fall short of convertible currency to repay its foreign debt,” Anatoly Nosko, deputy head of the bank’s board, reportedly said at a meeting of the interim Soviet government.

If that proves true, it would mark the first time that Vneshekonombank had been unable to make its debt payments. Western officials and economists have warned that default could do immeasurable damage to Soviet credit-worthiness, adding to the litany of economic problems that confront the country.

“The general idea is that you want to have some insurance against the risk of a liquidity crisis, because the international repercussions of a Soviet liquidity crisis are quite unpredictable,” said former German economics minister Horst Schulmann, now managing director of the Institute of International Finance in Washington. The institute’s membership includes banks in 37 countries.

But one U.S. official downplayed what would happen in such a situation. “It’s not as if, all of a sudden, the sun goes into eclipse. It goes into a gray area,” the official said. “It would be awkward.”

Fearing such a crunch, the United States has been urging its economic allies to offer the Soviets a temporary standstill on repayment of principal and possibly a bridge loan.

Europeans--who hold much of the debt--have resisted, however, saying that such a move would be premature and would undermine Soviet credit-worthiness in the eyes of international banks.

That issue is expected to be at the top of the agenda today, when U.S. Treasury Undersecretary David C. Mulford meets with his counterparts in the Group of Seven, which includes the United States, Germany, Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.

Another option to be discussed is a possible standby lending arrangement for the Soviets, Schulmann said. It would operate somewhat like a line of credit, with borrowing secured by Soviet assets, possibly gold, oil or mining rights.

One complication is that such arrangements usually are put together by international financial institutions. While the Soviet Union has applied for membership in the International Monetary Fund, it has received only “special associate” status.

Overall Soviet debt is estimated at $55 billion to $70 billion--a burden not considered unduly heavy for a country that size. However, much of it is short-term, with about $5 billion estimated to be due in the final three months of this year.

Schulmann noted that this is roughly the amount the Soviets have been paying throughout the year without difficulty. But in recent months, he said, the republics and individual Soviet enterprises, uncertain of their futures, have been withholding hard-currency earnings from the central government.

Moreover, individual enterprises have little incentive to remit their hard currency to the center under the unrealistically low official exchange rate of 1.7 rubles to the dollar when the black market rate is more than 100 to the dollar.