NEWS ANALYSIS : Baker Faces Tough Job in Central Asia : Diplomacy: He arrives touting democracy and a free market. But both ideas are overwhelmingly foreign to the former Soviet republics.

With his arrival in Uzbekistan on Saturday, Secretary of State James A. Baker III has visited every republic of the former Soviet Union except for strife-torn Georgia, an endurance record so far unmatched by any other foreign minister.

Washington’s objective is clear. As a senior Administration official told reporters traveling with Baker: “It is important that we have a presence so that we can exert some influence.”

But influence on whom and to what end?

The United States wants Russia and its neighbors to develop democratic policies and free-market economics and to get rid of most of their nuclear weapons, which as recently as a few months ago were pointed at targets in the United States and Western Europe.

But in the predominantly Muslim Central Asian republics that are the focus of Baker’s current 10-day diplomatic marathon, there is very little of either capitalism or democracy. And, for the most part, the new countries have been so isolated from the United States and the West that they found it difficult just to cope with the demands of a foreign VIP visit.

U.S. government analysts have expressed doubts about the staying power of some of the Central Asian regimes; all but Kyrgyzstan are headed by former Communist bureaucrats who proclaimed themselves independent-minded nationalists when the collapse of the Soviet Union became inevitable.

Nevertheless, Baker spent most of his time with presidents, foreign ministers and other top officials, following an unwritten U.S. policy of dealing with the people who hold power, no matter how tenuously.

Baker has not attempted to meet Central Asian opposition leaders so far on this trip, though he plans to do so today in Uzbekistan.

A senior State Department official said U.S. intelligence agencies have not identified significant opposition groups in either Turkmenistan or Tajikistan, although they have done so in Uzbekistan.

The distinction is a curious one. Government analysts say there is substantial Islamic-based opposition in the first two countries. And the Turkmenistan police certainly know the identities of opposition figures, because agents visited 20 of them on the eve of Baker’s arrival to place them effectively under house arrest.

The senior Administration official said the Baker party knew about the incident at the time and raised it with Turkmenistan President Saparmurad Niyazov.

“They were not arrested, and they were not detained, but they had been visited by security forces and told, in effect, not to do anything that would disrupt the visit of the American secretary of state,” the senior official said.

The official conceded that the Central Asian republics have a mixed record on human rights. But he said that all of them promised to do better in the future. “Their performance is not going to be spotless and perfect,” he said. “And some will be better than others.”

The same could be said for free-market economics. Local officials acknowledged that Central Asian leaders generally had no experience with free markets. However, they all vowed to move in that direction, apparently because they hope that capitalism will make them as prosperous as the United States and Germany.

In the American view, economic reform may have the best chance in Turkmenistan, because “its economy is . . . basically uncomplicated . . . it’s agriculturally based . . . (and) it’s also very rich in natural resources,” a senior U.S. official said.

Another official traveling with Baker added that Turkmenistan has “substantial economic potential--especially in oil, gas and cotton.”

As he treks across the former Soviet Union, Baker is calling on the leaders of the newly independent states to adopt an 11-point plan stressing democracy, free markets, protection of human rights, nuclear non-proliferation--and prompt payment of a share of the old Soviet Union’s debt.

Building U.S.-Commonwealth cooperation is also high on his agenda. On Saturday, during a visit to Ekaterinburg, Russia, where Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by Bolsheviks in 1918, Baker said he would send American forensics experts to identify bones and skeletons said to be those of the royal family. The question of what happened to the bodies has long been a mystery.

Baker said he was pleased with the reaction he received on his Central Asia tour, even though other officials said some of the leaders may have only a vague appreciation of what some of the points mean.

Even the United States has some doubts about how far to push the Central Asian regimes to permit opposition political activity because the strongest opposition groups in each state are Muslim fundamentalists who may hope to establish Iran-style Islamic republics in place of the generally secular regimes that are now in place.

The senior Administration official conceded that Iran “is in a position to expand its influence now in these republics with the disappearance of the Soviet Union,” despite Baker’s effort to warn the new governments to be wary of the Tehran regime.