Ukraine Perils Republics’ Unity : Commonwealth: Balking at Russian control, the dissident state blocks agreement for full economic cooperation. Military financing accord also fails.

Fissures within the Commonwealth of Independent States deepened Saturday when Ukraine, apparently fearing renewed Russian domination, blocked agreement on economic unity in a move that could bring the group’s collapse as the successor to the Soviet Union.

Ukrainian representatives refused to sign a series of key agreements that would preserve old Soviet trade links, prevent state enterprises from using their monopolies to drive up prices and maintain a common market among the Commonwealth’s 11 members.

The Ukrainians also rejected a system of centralized imports regarded by other members as essential in the current economic crisis, and they refused to accept Russia as the Soviet Union’s legal successor in the payment of its foreign debts, a measure intended to ensure international credits for all.

Ukraine even blocked agreement on the tariff-free transit of goods across Commonwealth states, proposing instead to tax such traffic and thus profit from its control of what were the Soviet Union’s best southern ports as well as rail links to Western Europe.

The meeting of the Commonwealth’s heads of government also debated but failed to agree on how its armed forces will be financed--another point of controversy between Russia and Ukraine, which have been feuding over ownership of the old Soviet navy.

The failure of Commonwealth leaders to agree on these basic measures put in doubt the future of the Russian economic reforms, for they are based, in large part, on open trade among the member states.

“We are failing to take steps to preserve the new Commonwealth that we have founded,” Vyacheslav Kebich, the Belarussian prime minister, said angrily after the daylong meeting, warning that his country and other former Soviet republics now face “economic paralysis and a halt in production.”

“I really do not understand the Ukrainian reasoning,” Kebich said, posing the question of how long the Commonwealth will last if it remains torn by such animosity. “The Ukrainians say they have their reasons, but their logic eludes me. . . . We are still treating each other with mistrust.”

Ukraine, in a further escalation of its tense, “don’t-push-me” relationship with Russia, had all but boycotted the meeting.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Vitold Fokin explained his absence from the heads-of-government meeting by a parliamentary vote of confidence he was facing in Kiev, but he refused to send his deputy or empower his delegation, led by a deputy economics minister, to approve anything beyond the coordination of weather forecasts, environmental protection and energy supplies.

Gennady E. Burbulis, Russia’s first deputy prime minister, who chaired the meeting, sought to minimize the divisions within the Commonwealth. He told a news conference that the Commonwealth’s heads of state will likely reach agreement on broad economic measures when they meet Friday in Minsk, the capital of Belarus and headquarters of the Commonwealth.

Burbulis predicted that several of the economic agreements would be signed even before the Minsk meeting after the Ukrainian government has reviewed them and that other issues would be resolved at the Commonwealth’s next heads-of-government session in March.

Ukraine’s virtual boycott stemmed as much, however, from its dispute with Russia over the future of the Soviet navy’s powerful Black Sea Fleet, which both Moscow and Kiev claim, and the status of the Crimean Peninsula as from its differences with Russia over economic policies.

And Russian officials acknowledged that Ukraine’s insistence on its separate policies as well as its failure to participate in the meeting Saturday once again raised the question of whether it sees its membership in the Commonwealth as only temporary, a transitional phase-out of the old Soviet Union.

Russia and Ukraine have been pulling apart almost from the moment their presidents signed the agreement two months ago establishing the Commonwealth and dissolving the Soviet Union. Without Ukraine, Russia sees itself alarmingly vulnerable, politically and economically, but Kiev fears Moscow’s domination in any but the loosest union.

The failure of the Commonwealth meeting to achieve its basic goals appeared likely to lend even greater drama to the calls by conservatives for “an economic state of emergency” to steer at least Russia through the growing crisis here.

Russian Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi, increasingly the focus of rightist opposition to President Boris N. Yeltsin, declared on Saturday, “The time has evidently come to declare an economic state of emergency in Russia, even if only for a year.”

The economic reforms could not work because of the “anarchy” in the country, Rutskoi said, urging a nationalistic, “Russia-first” policy that would leave other former Soviet republics to fend for themselves--if not reincorporated back into Russia.

Yeltsin, seeking to repair relations with Ukraine, on Friday proposed a one-on-one summit with Leonid Kravchuk, the Ukrainian president, following the Commonwealth heads-of-state meeting in Minsk.

“I think we can (resolve Russian-Ukrainian) differences,” Yeltsin said. “After all, we are not making any territorial claims.”

Kravchuk, who has become increasingly tough in asserting Ukrainian sovereignty, has not replied to Yeltsin’s offer, but sentiment appears to be mounting in Ukraine to break away from Russia and proceed alone.

There are also serious differences between Moscow and several non-Slavic states. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan also failed to send their prime ministers to the heads-of-government meeting despite its importance. Georgia, which has not joined the Commonwealth, sent its acting prime minister, Tengiz Sigua, as an observer.

Without agreement on basic economic reforms, Russia is unlikely to continue its indirect subsidies to the other Commonwealth members and, instead, is likely to pursue the isolationist course advocated by Rutskoi.

This would cost Russia important markets for its own products if it went unilaterally to world prices, and its political influence and international standing would decline if the Commonwealth collapsed.

But Russia simply cannot afford, even members of the Yeltsin government say, to slow its own march to a market economy by maintaining old Soviet policies.

The economic agreements, which were accepted by all the delegations except that of Ukraine, were regarded as particularly crucial, for they would have based trade among Commonwealth members fully on world prices for the first time, eliminating subsidies. This would promote the transformation of the old Soviet economy to an interconnected network of free-market economies.

Yegor T. Gaidar, Russia’s deputy prime minister for economic reform, said that prices in rubles would be calculated by multiplying dollar-based world prices by a factor of 20 to 30 in a special ruble-dollar exchange rate for trade among Commonwealth members.

Prices would rise considerably under the proposed arrangement, but the impact would be far less drastic than using the Russian Central Bank’s current market rate of 110 rubles to the dollar.

The other basic measure, also postponed because of Ukrainian refusal to sign, was an agreement limiting windfall profits by monopoly producers after the ending of price controls; under the old Soviet system of state ownership and central planning, most enterprises dominated their markets with virtually no competition.

On a third economic issue, all the Commonwealth’s members except Ukraine agreed that Russia would act as a guarantor for transactions involving foreign credit agreements, Burbulis said. Russia would repay the members’ share of the estimated $70-billion debt inherited from the former Soviet Union and collect from them.

“This is almost the same as the agreements we already had,” Burbulis said. “In particular, the Russian Federation is recognized as the state realizing operations for other states.”

Ukraine has declared its readiness to repay its share of Soviet debt, which it puts at 16.37%, but it says that it wants to do so separately in order to manage its own economy better.

The delegations debated at length who will pay for the Commonwealth’s integrated armed forces, but they failed to reach agreement, again largely because of a dispute between Russia and Ukraine.

“This is a great load for Russia,” Burbulis said, noting that Russia alone is paying the day-to-day costs of most of the former Soviet armed forces. “We would like other Commonwealth states to participate. Belarus, Kazakhstan and others are ready, but they are justly demanding that the appropriate level of their participation be determined.”

Defense ministers from the Commonwealth members will meet this week to decide what units will remain in the integrated, strategic force and how the cost will be shared.