Yeltsin Proposes ‘Commonwealth’ to Save Soviet Union : Policy: He declares Gorbachev’s efforts a failure. ‘Slavic summit’ leads up to high-stakes Moscow meeting.

Branding Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s efforts to salvage the Soviet Union a failure, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin met the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus at a forest lodge Saturday to unveil his own plan for averting national collapse--a “commonwealth” among the republics.

The secret talks in a wooded preserve near the Polish border, held as the temperature dipped to near zero, were quickly dubbed the “Slavic summit” since they involved the three Slavic lands that were the core of the now imploding Soviet Union.

Yeltsin said the leaders felt the need to hear each other out and if possible arrive at a consensus before a high-stakes Monday meeting in Moscow along with Gorbachev, the Soviet president, and Kazakhstan President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev.

The Kremlin gathering may determine whether Soviet republics, now spinning further and further apart, have a common future at all.

“We have good relations, we three leaders, and must keep up contacts,” Yeltsin told the Belarus legislature after landing in Minsk, Belarus’ capital, on Saturday morning. “You can imagine if relations worsened between Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine--it would be a catastrophe.”

After the arrival of Ukrainian President Leonid M. Kravchuk, who spoke the previous day in vague terms of a future “Slavic union,” Kravchuk, Yeltsin and Belarus President Stanislav Shushkevich flew to Viskuli in the region of Brest for two days of talks.

The lodge, built during the reign of Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev, was once used by the Communist hierarchy for bison hunts.

In his speech at the Parliament in Minsk, Yeltsin showed that he now believes Gorbachev’s stubborn bid to reconstruct a “Union of Sovereign States” on the basis of the Soviet Union has flopped and that a novel concept is needed.

“The attempt to recreate the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the Leninist mold has failed,” Yeltsin told the lawmakers. “The republics refuse to delegate to the center the volume of powers that it demands from them.

“Today (Gorbachev’s) idea of a semi-federal, semi-confederal arrangement is also undergoing failure,” he said. “If any element of unitarianism is left, there is a risk of the rebirth of the system that has taken us into a dead end after more than 70 years. . . .”

What has become imperative, Yeltsin said, is a new conception of relations among republics that will be profitable for all. He declined to give details of his plan.

In a brief crowd plunge on Lenin Square outside the Parliament, Yeltsin told Minsk residents who came to see him despite the icy cold that the weekend meeting could decide what functions, if any, are left to Gorbachev in the revamped state structure.

Meeting in Moscow with a group of U.S. businessmen, Gorbachev said he was “pinning great hopes” on the Slavic summit, and he again stressed his desire to win approval for his proposed Union Treaty reforging a Soviet political union, the Interfax news agency reported.

To successfully rebuild the crumbling Soviet economy, the Kremlin leader said in justification, a “political base” is also needed.

Touching what will inevitably be one of the sorest points of the two days of talks at Viskuli, Yeltsin said that participation by the Ukraine, an agricultural and industrial powerhouse, is absolutely essential if any sort of association of republics is to succeed.

“Russia has always been for the union. But as I have said many times, if Ukraine won’t take part in the union, many of the most complicated kinds of problems will arise,’ Yeltsin said. “We’d be on different sides of the barricades.”

Arriving aboard his official Tupolev-134 jet at the airfield outside Minsk, Kravchuk said he would hold to his decision to stay out of the union sought by Gorbachev, but he spoke of the possibility of future “alliances” between the republics.

One week ago, voters in a Ukrainian referendum endorsed independence by more than 90% and elected Kravchuk to a five-year presidential term.

Asked by journalists who met him on the snow-dusted runway if Yeltsin and Shushkevich could persuade him to change his mind about a political union, Kravchuk said, “Even if you could persuade Kravchuk, you can’t persuade the Ukrainian people. It has had its say.”

The summit near Brest “should play a most important role in determining how we live, what plans we construct, what interstate alliances we build, how to preserve the people, the economy,” the Ukrainian leader said.