U.S. to Recognize Ukraine in Policy Shift, Officials Say : Soviet Union: Washington will no longer resist disintegration of Kremlin government. The republic is expected to vote heavily for independence.

The United States now plans to offer diplomatic recognition to the soon-to-be independent Ukraine after President Bush and his senior advisers concluded that the Administration should no longer resist the tide of Soviet disintegration, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The decision, reached in a top-level White House meeting Tuesday, marks a significant departure in policy for an Administration that had long sought to prop up the central government in Moscow.

“The handwriting is on the wall,” a U.S. official said, anticipating an overwhelming Ukrainian vote for independence Sunday, “and we want to be able to help them manage the transition.”

Under terms of a plan outlined by Bush to Ukrainian-American leaders Wednesday, the Administration may wait weeks before making an official announcement to ensure that the Ukraine fulfills its pledges on nuclear weapons security and other policies.

Bush wants assurances that the Ukrainians will destroy or remove the estimated 2,000 Soviet nuclear missiles on their territory, adhere to U.S.-Soviet arms treaties and seek economic and security agreements with the Russian Federation and its other neighbors, they said.

But senior Administration officials, sharply divided over the issue only a week ago, said Wednesday that their ranks have now closed around a policy that calls for the United States to move toward recognition “expeditiously.”

The new U.S. posture, conveyed to American allies in the hope that they will embrace the approach, lays the groundwork for the rapid emergence of the Ukraine as Europe’s newest and second-largest nation. It comes as a setback for Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and appears to doom any lingering hope that the Soviet Union can hold its 12 remaining republics together in a political confederation.

For the Administration, the change marks the abandonment of a deference to Moscow that had denied recognition to any breakaway republic, unless its secession was first endorsed by the Soviet central government.

In a signal of that departure, the Administration this week simultaneously transmitted both to Moscow and the Ukrainian capital of Kiev the news that the Senate had ratified the U.S.-Soviet treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, an Administration official said.

And in top-level discussions at the White House on Wednesday about the impending Ukrainian declaration of independence, he noted: “There was no mention that this was any longer an issue between the center and the republics. The center is simply over.”

A State Department official added: “Action by Moscow is not a precondition for what we do. We’re more interested in seeing how the Ukraine moves ahead on the issues.”

The decision also appears to head off a threatened political mutiny by the potent Ukrainian-American bloc, whose 750,000 voters are a source of traditional Republican support but could have abandoned Bush if he did not reach out to the Ukraine.

Taras Szmagala, the spokesman for the group that met with Bush on Wednesday, warned that the question of U.S. recognition had become the “political gut issue” for Ukrainian-Americans and pronounced himself “very pleased” by the President’s assurances.

The delegation was briefed only in general terms about the change in policy, said participants in the meeting. But Administration officials later detailed the shift to which Bush and his senior advisers agreed in the top-level meeting Tuesday.

“We will recognize them,” one official said, “and it will be sooner rather than later.” The officials said the United States will “salute” the Ukrainian declaration after the vote Sunday, will quickly expand its contacts with the Ukraine government immediately afterward and will probably move to full recognition within a month.

An Administration official insisted that there will be no “conditions” to such recognition. But he and other sources said the delay in a formal announcement will encourage the Ukraine’s new leaders to fulfill the pledges on arms control and to make arrangements for the Russian minority populations within their borders.

In particular, Administration officials said, the United States hopes to see evidence that the Ukraine will not move to become a nuclear power and intends to adhere to U.S.-Soviet arms-control treaties.

The new plan shelves the cautious approach repeated only Tuesday by State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler, who noted that the principles of U.S. policy toward the breakaway Soviet republics insist that any change in borders occur only with the consent of Moscow.

Because Gorbachev has rejected the Ukrainian call for independence, some Administration officials had warned that the U.S. stance made it likely that the United States would again be among the last to recognize the emergence of a new European state, as it had been with the Baltics earlier this year.

Administration officials said the new step resolves a deep difference between Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who had urged that the United States recognize Ukraine immediately, and Secretary of State James A. Baker III and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, the architects of the go-slow strategy. The policy came under active review in recent weeks after mid-level officials warned that the Administration risked embarrassment and impotence as the Ukraine moved toward secession despite U.S. appeals.

By last week, the “sub-cabinet” had largely agreed on the new position, and the final accord came after a series of high-level meetings in the last three days, Administration officials said.

While they are more willing than before to recognize and support Ukrainian independence, U.S. officials note that they still want the Ukraine to maintain military and economic ties with the other republics of what they increasingly call “the former Soviet Union.”

Militarily, the Ukraine must devise a system of joint Ukrainian-Soviet control over the estimated 2,000 Soviet nuclear missiles on its territory until they can be either dismantled or moved, officials said. The Ukraine must also work out an agreement with Moscow on the disposition of the more than 1 million Red Army troops in the republic, as well as 7,000 tanks and hundreds of combat aircraft.

The Ukrainian Parliament alarmed U.S. officials last month by voting to raise an independent army with as many as 400,000 troops. Since then, Ukrainian leader Leonid M. Kravchuk has said an independent Ukraine would seek a military agreement with the Kremlin that would send some Soviet troops to Russia and put others under the control of the Ukrainian government.