Gorbachev Bid for Unity Stalls : Soviet Union: Seven republics fail to sign the new Union Treaty and five others don’t even show up. The failure puts the country’s future existence in question.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s efforts to bind together the remnants of the Soviet Union stalled when leaders of seven republics failed Monday to sign the treaty that would create a new political union and five other republics refused to send delegates to the meeting.

The setback was one of the most serious Gorbachev has suffered since he began the tortuous negotiations on the draft treaty last spring. Now not only the shape and character of the new union but its very existence are in serious question.

“I must say that everything returned to square one, to be quite frank,” Gorbachev said as he emerged, tense and dejected, from the meeting with the republic leaders that was to have ended with a preliminary signing of the new Union Treaty.

The treaty, which Gorbachev had hoped would take effect by the end of next month, instead was sent to the parliaments of the country’s remaining 12 republics, as well as to the national legislature for debate.

Although Gorbachev spoke of the desire by the republic presidents to involve their parliaments in drafting the treaty--which would establish a new constitutional basis for the union--the strongest objections came from Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin. He wants greater powers for his Russian Federation and less for the central government, said Soviet officials who were present.

“Yeltsin wants Russia to be the political, economic and strategic successor of the Soviet Union,” a senior Soviet official, a Gorbachev supporter, commented. “Tougher and certainly more negotiations lie ahead. . . . Not everyone is prepared to hand over power to Yeltsin or follow his lead.”

But even as the meeting opened, another serious setback was obvious--only Russia and neighboring Belarus (formerly Byelorussia) and the five Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan (Kirghizia), Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were participating.

The Ukraine, the country’s second most populous and second wealthiest republic after the Russian Federation, was boycotting the signing, awaiting results of a referendum due Sunday on whether to seek full independence. The southern republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia and Moldova, on the border with Romania, also were absent.

While the new country, which tentatively would be called the “Union of Sovereign States,” would still have about 215 million people, or more than two-thirds of the present Soviet population, the five Central Asian republics with 60 million people could give it an orientation that the Russian Federation would not welcome.

“To enter the union with only Muslim republics, with the departure of almost all Christian republics situated to the west, would strongly reorient Russia’s geopolitical position from European to Asian values,” commented Galina Starovoitova, an ethnographer and a key Yeltsin adviser. “I think the text of the treaty will be revised many more times.”

Gorbachev said he expects the Ukraine, population 52 million, and perhaps other republics to sign the Union Treaty--eventually. “I cannot imagine a new Union Treaty without the Ukraine,” he told a press conference. “I am convinced they will join, I know the mood of the people there.”

The State Council, made up of the republic presidents and Gorbachev, called for adoption of the treaty by the year’s end. But negotiators may need that long to deal with the amendments and corrections already proposed.

“This process simply cannot be protracted any longer,” Gorbachev said. “The country and society are in such a state that things must be moving ahead because without this agreement neither the economic treaty or reforms nor anything else will work. This main knot must be untangled urgently--the issue of our statehood.”

Describing the discussion as sharp and serious, Gorbachev commented, “Once again, the debate concentrated on the nature of the planned state: Will it be a unitarian state or a union?

“Again this (issue) evolved into the focal point of the entire debate,” he continued, “but again the old, already agreed upon, formula was left in the text. Namely, the Union of Sovereign States will be a democratic, confederative state, uniting the participant sovereign states.”

The treaty provides for the maximum devolution of authority to the republics and leaves the central government in charge of foreign policy, national security and the coordination of economic activity.

Although several substantial changes were made in the treaty during debate--further strengthening the State Council, eliminating the post of chairman of the national legislature and subordinating the chief state prosecutor to the Supreme Court--most of the other issues were left for discussion by republic parliaments and further negotiation.

“I think the heads of the republics exhibited here (the desire to have) some political mileage and some room for maneuvering,” Gorbachev commented. “They referred to the prerogative of the Supreme Soviets to decide on such matters. They want to avoid the impression of not being deferential enough vis-a-vis their legislatures.”

Gorbachev, uncharacteristically hesitant and nervous after the closed-door session, called for the rapid resolution of the remaining questions and the republics’ approval of the treaty.

“We must do everything possible to speed up the process because we cannot keep the society in this state,” he said, referring to his trip last week to the Siberian industrial center of Irkutsk and to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. “Even there, they were pressing this on me--whether some common state will survive and whether the inter-ethnic peace will be preserved. The people labor under the heavy weight of anxiety.”

So certain had Gorbachev been that the treaty would be signed that his office had arranged for live television coverage from Novo-Ogaryovo, the Moscow suburb where the talks have been held since April. Newspaper editors had been asked to provide sufficient space for the text of the treaty in today’s editions. And champagne was on hand to toast the accord, but it reportedly went to the waiters when the treaty was not signed.

“I can see that my colleagues in the State Council are under heavy pressure from all sorts of (political) currents which express doubts about preservation of any form of the common state,” Gorbachev said. “Even if we sign the treaty right away and, thus, preserve the union, we will have lost a lot of time and room for maneuvering. . . . Society has so disintegrated, the ties have been disrupted to such a degree. . . .

“And if, on top of this, we embark on the road of creating an amorphous state . . . instead of a proper union, reformed and rebuilt, with the different role for the constituent republics, with the different union bodies et cetera, I can only say this will be a tragedy, nothing less.”