Sides Far Apart on Black Sea Fleet : Military: Commonwealth official wants 80% of vessels. Ukraine is likely to propose same split--the other way.

After four months of political sparring, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met here Wednesday to resolve the future of the Soviet Union’s powerful Black Sea Fleet, an issue that has embittered relations between the two former Soviet republics and consequently jeopardized the whole Commonwealth of Independent States.

Air Marshal Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov, commander of Commonwealth forces and the former Soviet defense minister, declared as the talks opened that 80% of the fleet--a force of 345 surface ships, 28 submarines and 159 aircraft--should remain part of Commonwealth forces, with Ukraine taking just coastal units.

“I think that 20% of the fleet should be handed over to Ukraine and the rest remain under the command of the Commonwealth’s unified armed forces,” Shaposhnikov told the influential Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

But the Ukrainian proposals for a division are also likely to be about 80-20--in the opposite direction. Some Ukrainian officials indeed asserted that the whole fleet, comparable to that of Britain, should belong to the young republic, which is struggling to establish itself as a European power.

“The biggest difficulty is that we are in a complete disagreement about the approach or principle we should be using in dividing this fleet,” said Navy Capt. Anatoly Katalov, an arms-control specialist advising Gen. Konstantin Morozov, the Ukrainian defense minister.

Although professing to take the negotiations seriously, the Ukrainian delegation came to the talks with this maximalist position and then expressed skepticism about an early settlement, saying its hope is only to find some common ground in the initial talks.

“I am not happy with the course (of negotiations during the day)--there was mistrust in the atmosphere much of the time,” said Andriy Veselovsky, press secretary of the Ukrainian delegation.

“When you consider that the entire Black Sea Fleet constitutes only about 9% of the entire fleet of the former Soviet Union, asking for the whole thing does not (seem very much),” Katalov said.

Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk decreed a complete takeover of the fleet early this month as well as of all its nuclear weapons, and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin replied with his own decree, declaring all of the fleet to be Russia’s.

The dispute has thus become an issue of national pride as well as a test of wills for the two leaders.

With pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian factions forming within the 90,000-man fleet and even among the crews of different ships, many of them armed with nuclear weapons, the potential for serious conflict is real.

But the Russian-Ukrainian squabble has grown beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union, with NATO members, including the United States, increasingly concerned about the possibility of belligerence. On Wednesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko talked by telephone with Secretary of State James A. Baker III before the talks opened.

In the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on Wednesday, Parliament granted the Crimean Peninsula--home of the Black Sea Fleet--unprecedented autonomy in an effort to forestall a move by Russian residents there toward full independence from Ukraine and possible reunion with Russia.

“The Republic of Crimea is an autonomous part of Ukraine and decides independently on all issues,” said a law approved by Parliament.

The Crimean legislature decided this month to recognize the validity of a petition signed by more than 246,000 people calling for a referendum on the question, “Are you for an independent Republic of Crimea in union with other states?”

Special correspondent Shprintsen reported from Odessa and Times staff writer Parks from Moscow.