Russia Asks Recognition From U.S. : Diplomacy: Baker says he will consider the request for new status for Moscow and its commonwealth partners. Secretary’s tour will take him to five republics.

The foreign minister of the increasingly assertive Russian Federation on Sunday urged Secretary of State James A. Baker III to extend U.S. diplomatic recognition to Russia and its partners in the new Commonwealth of Independent States to “stop the further disintegration in this part of the world.”

“We do ask now for full diplomatic recognition of (the) independent states in this part of the world, those which created the new commonwealth,” Andrei V. Kozyrev told reporters as Baker stood by his side. In addition to Russia, those states are Ukraine and Belarus.

“This will help to crystallize authority of the people’s votes in Ukraine, Russia and Byelorussia (the previous name for Belarus),” he added.

Baker said that Washington will consider the request, although he said the Bush Administration is reluctant to take the step because formal U.S. recognition of the independence of the three Slavic republics would surely drive the final nail into the coffin of the Soviet Union as a nation-state.

“The transitions that are going on here are remarkable (but) for the most part, they are essentially political issues that are internal issues here,” Baker said. “It is not up to the United States to involve ourselves in these internal political issues, to try to take any part or play any role in that.

“We will obviously be looking at the suggestion that has been made here as we are now looking at a similar request from . . . Ukraine,” Baker added. He said one reason why he will be going to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on Tuesday is to discuss possible U.S. recognition of that republic’s independence.

Shortly before Ukraine voted for independence in a referendum earlier this month, a senior White House official had said the Administration would recognize that independence “expeditiously.” But since the vote, the U.S. government has not acted.

“I do understand the United States is in a delicate position,” Kozyrev said.

Baker went into an hourlong meeting with Kozyrev shortly after arriving in Moscow at the start of a visit that will also take him to Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Later Sunday, Baker had dinner with his longtime friend and colleague, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

But despite Baker’s close relationship with Shevardnadze, his agenda for this visit leaves little doubt that the U.S. government believes that effective power--and ultimately control over about 27,000 nuclear weapons--has passed from the central government of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Shevardnadze to the Russian Federation and the other republics.

Later, a senior State Department official told reporters that there seems to be “a clear direction in favor of the commonwealth” over Gorbachev’s hope for retaining some form of central government.

However, the official said that both Kozyrev and Shevardnadze emphasized that the commonwealth proclamation was hastily cobbled together and is still very much a work in progress.

The official said that as a result of his first day of meetings, Baker has not changed his belief, expressed before he left Washington, that Soviet nuclear weapons continue to be under effective control.

Baker meets separately today with Gorbachev and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin. Both meetings are scheduled to be held at Catherine’s Hall in the Kremlin, the room where the top leaders of the Soviet Union traditionally meet foreign dignitaries. Although Baker has conferred with Yeltsin on previous visits to Moscow, this will be the first time the arrangements seem so calculated as to demonstrate that the Russian president enjoys at least equal status with Gorbachev.

Kozyrev appealed to Baker for diplomatic recognition shortly after he had said he would do so in an interview on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation.” He told the television audience: “Russia now behaves as (an) independent state, and we will urge recognition as such.”

Nevertheless, the request was somewhat surprising because the Russian Parliament--unlike the legislatures in most of the other 11 remaining republics of what used to be the Soviet Union--has never formally declared its independence of the old entity.

On the flight from Washington to Moscow, Baker said he seeks “reaffirmation of the assurances we received before” that the Soviet nuclear arsenal will be kept under effective control for as long as the weapons exist. Before he flies to Brussels on Thursday for a meeting of foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Baker will have visited all four republics where major parts of the nuclear force are kept.

Baker also is expected to suggest ways that the United States can assist in the destruction of the weapons. Congress has appropriated $400 million for that purpose.

Asked if Russia is ready to reassure Washington about the nuclear weapons on its territory, Kozyrev replied cryptically that the composition of the Russian team at Yeltsin’s meeting with Baker today will be as interesting as the positioning of members of the Communist Politburo atop Lenin’s tomb used to be each May Day. Although he declined to elaborate, he was apparently hinting that a senior general in the still unified Soviet army would appear as part of Yeltsin’s Russian delegation.

Yeltsin conferred with Soviet Defense Minister Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov on Saturday night to discuss ideas for the commonwealth’s military structure in a meeting that notably excluded Gorbachev.

According to the official Tass news agency, Yeltsin and Shaposhnikov agreed, in broad outline, that the commonwealth states will share a “common military-strategic space” with unified command over nuclear forces, the air force, missile forces and the navy.

“At the meeting, possible candidacies for the post of commander in chief of the unified armed forces were also discussed,” a Yeltsin spokesman told Tass, without specifying whether Gorbachev, the current commander in chief, was in the running.

The evolving concept of the commonwealth’s defense structure appears to contradict Ukrainian President Leonid M. Kravchuk’s earlier claims that each nuclear-armed republic would have its own trigger, making a launch possible only if all pressed the button simultaneously.

Kravchuk maintained Sunday that each of the four nuclear republics--Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus--will have an effective veto over the firing of nuclear weapons. But he acknowledged that the exact mechanism for nuclear weapons control, balancing a unified command with the rights of each nuclear republic, had yet to be worked out.

Rules on the use of nuclear weapons “will be decided by a separate political agreement between the presidents of the states on whose territories the nuclear arms are deployed,” Kravchuk told viewers during a Kiev-to-Moscow television broadcast.

Ultimately, he said, “we will aim for total disarmament. That is our great common goal.”

Times staff writer Carey Goldberg contributed to this report.