Legislators of Ex-Soviet Republics Reach for More Power : Commonwealth: They set up an interparliamentary group to coordinate activities.

Worried about the ineffectiveness of presidential rule in solving the mounting problems of the Commonwealth of Independent States, leaders of the parliaments of nine former Soviet republics agreed Thursday that they need a greater say in running affairs.

Lawmakers from throughout the former Soviet Union assembled in a posh Moscow hotel to set up a consultative body they called the Inter-Parliamentary Conference, the first standing Commonwealth body established by the legislative, rather than executive, branch.

The conference will help coordinate the legal, economic and political aspects of Commonwealth activities. With that in mind, the lawmakers signed four agreements putting the necessary institutional machinery in place.

“This conference has both a supplementary and independent role,” said Vladimir N. Podoprigora, head of the Russian delegation’s working group. “As an auxiliary body, it can create a more favorable climate in our republics for ratification of presidential decisions.”

The need now being felt from Moscow and Minsk to Dushanbe to raise the profile of the legislative branch appears to stem from a shared concern over the seeming inability of Commonwealth presidents to produce effective, lasting solutions to worsening problems.

As recent speeches in the Russian Parliament indicate, there is a growing conviction among some lawmakers that presidents, such as Russia’s Boris N. Yeltsin, are groping, not pursuing a clear policy. The legislators also complain that they, the people’s duly elected representatives, have been cut out of the decision-making process.

“All of our legislatures would like to know more about the negotiations--occasionally very complicated ones--which are being held by the heads of our governments and presidents,” Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, the chairman of the Russian Parliament, said in the opening speech. “Elements of misunderstanding appear in our Parliament and in others as well.”

As Yeltsin continued his marathon of meetings to try to chart a course away from economic decline and to placate a population subjected to what some opposition newspapers have branded “shock without therapy,” Khasbulatov hammered his point home, saying: “Relationships between people, movement of goods, migration of the population, all these are very difficult problems, and our executive powers can hardly resolve them without an active interaction (with) the Parliament members.”

To give weight to his words, Khasbulatov needed a show of greater unity with his Ukrainian counterpart than Yeltsin has achieved with his counterpart in Ukraine, President Leonid Kravchuk. With certain qualifications, that was achieved.

Of the 11 republics, Uzbekistan did not participate, and Moldova sent only an observer. Ukraine did strongly object to the Russian insistence on setting up an inter-parliamentary assembly, a body that it feared would “dominate” its own legislative activity.

But an open break was avoided and a compromise was reached quickly--the Russian-backed proposal was merged with another to create inter-parliamentary commissions.

Grebenshikov is a reporter in the Times Moscow bureau.