U.S., Allies Unveil $24-Billion Aid Plan for Struggling Russia : Economics: The American share is $5 billion. Bush presents the program as a step to avoid a return to totalitarianism. He cites the ‘high stakes.’

The United States and its major diplomatic partners unveiled a $24-billion program Wednesday to bolster Russia’s struggling economy, stabilize its currency and provide far-reaching support for the long transition to a market system. The United States will contribute $5 billion.

The program is the most comprehensive assistance package offered to Russia since the Communist Soviet Union fragmented and its republics were left to fashion independent economies on their own.

Presenting the program as a crucial step in helping Russia and other republics avoid a slide back into their totalitarian past that could bring a return to the Cold War, President Bush said at a White House news conference: “The stakes are as high for us now as any that we have faced in this century.”

The assistance was first announced in Bonn, where German Chancellor Helmut Kohl urged Western nations to help the states making up the former Soviet Union “quickly, extensively and effectively . . . stop the economic decline there.”

Britain, Canada, France, Italy and Japan are taking part, in addition to the United States and Germany.

Bush had been criticized in recent weeks by former President Richard M. Nixon, other Republicans and Democrats for failing to provide swift economic assistance to Russia and the other new nations.

His proposal won generally strong endorsements from Democratic and Republican congressional leaders. Nixon endorsed the plan, telling NBC News on Wednesday, “This is a recession year, and aid is not popular. But in aiding them we’re helping ourselves.”

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who is leading in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Wednesday that the Bush proposal will be “good for them and good for us.”

But he complained that the Bush Administration had been “overly cautious” in recognizing the need for such aid and charged that it had operated “not for policy considerations but for political calculation.”

Under the key elements of the plan, the bulk of which does not require congressional approval, the United States and its allies will:

* Establish a $6-billion program to stabilize the Russian currency, the ruble, against serious fluctuations as it is converted into Western currencies. Wide variations in its value as measured against the dollar, Japanese yen, British pound, German mark and French franc, among others, could threaten Russia’s politically tenuous march toward a free-market economy built on foreign trade.

* Make $18 billion available to help Russia reform its economy as it emerges from seven decades of Communist control of prices, distribution and supplies.

Of this figure, $4.5 billion would come from three international financial institutions--the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Another $2.5 billion would come from deferring payments on Russian debt to Western institutions. And the leading industrial nations known as the Group of Seven, which includes the United States, would contribute $11 billion. The U.S. share in this category would be $2.6 billion, most of which would be devoted to U.S. government guarantees for commercial loans allowing Russia to buy American grain and to grants for medical and food assistance.

Smaller amounts in similar programs are being made available to the other former Soviet republics. Washington said it would offer $1.6 billion, making the total U.S. contribution $6.6 billion.

Clinton claimed partial credit for prodding the White House into announcing the plan. “I am flattered, I am glad, and I say let’s do some more,” he said. “I wish that I could have the same influence on his domestic policy.”

In a foreign policy speech in New York that had been scheduled several days earlier, the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination proposed a similar $6-billion ruble stabilization fund, to which the United States would contribute $1 billion, and a $12-billion international financial aid program, to which the United States would contribute $1.2 billion.

Clinton’s rival, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., said that he regards the Administration plan as “moving in the direction that is needed to help bring the Soviet Union back into the family of nations.”

Speaking with reporters, Bush went to unusual lengths to portray the extent to which the Administration had been working on the program, beginning with a speech outlining the need in December by Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

“Rather than kind of posturing out there, we wanted to have a sound program that will have strong international support. And that is exactly, thanks to the cooperation of the allies, what we have,” Bush said.

He added: “This isn’t any Johnny-come-lately thing, and this isn’t driven by election-year pressures. It’s what’s right for the United States.”

However, a senior Administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he would not quarrel with the suggestion that Nixon’s criticism, pressure from Kohl and the Clinton speech combined to drive Bush into delivering his program Wednesday.

The Administration’s concern about helping the former Soviet republics stems from fears that Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin has only a limited time to produce a stable, consumer-oriented market economy before political pressures from a dissatisfied populace will undermine the democratic reforms there.

“If this democratic revolution is defeated, it could plunge us into a world more dangerous in some respects than the dark years of the Cold War,” the President said.

“We’ve got to act now,” Bush declared, pressing for quick congressional action on the principal element of the package that requires House and Senate votes.

Baker said the bill will be sent to Congress on Wednesday, but officials said later that it will not be ready until Friday. It deals with a wide range of issues, including humanitarian assistance, nuclear safety, building free markets and support for democratic institutions.

At the heart of the program is Russia’s impending membership in the International Monetary Fund.

In Bonn, Kohl presented the plan as “a decisive signal of political and economic support” for Yeltsin and other reformers.

Kohl, chairman of the Group of Seven, also called for “a determined effort” in improving security at Soviet-style nuclear plants. He warned that the recent problems at a plant outside St. Petersburg made it “clear that a second Chernobyl, with devastating economic, ecological and political consequences, is possible at any time.”

The German chancellor has long been pressuring other industrial nations to share the burden of supporting reforms in the Commonwealth of Independent States, as the former Soviet republics are known.

Germany has contributed more than half of all Western aid to the former Soviet Union and its successor states since November, 1989.

Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Jones from Berlin. Times staff writers Robert A. Rosenblatt and William J. Eaton also contributed to this report from Washington.

* BUSH AMBIVALENT: President seems uncomfortable in asking nation to help. A8

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