Ukraine Scorns Stronger Commonwealth : Politics: Kiev rejects a Soviet ‘revival’ and reasserts ownership of nuclear arms.

On the eve of a key summit, Ukrainian officials Thursday scorned attempts to strengthen the Commonwealth of Independent States and adamantly refused to give up legal claims to nuclear weapons remaining on Ukraine’s soil.

Breaking again with the 10 other Commonwealth members, Ukraine indicated it would not sign a proposed charter for the amorphous grouping that arose on former Soviet territory.

“Ukraine cannot accept the transition of the C.I.S. into a new supranational structure,” said Anton Buteiko, chief foreign policy adviser to Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk. “It would be little more than a revival of the Soviet Union.”

In Minsk, the capital of Belarus and the Commonwealth where Commonwealth defense ministers gathered for a preliminary meeting, Deputy Ukrainian Defense Minister Ivan Bizhan said that, although nuclear weapons left in Ukraine remain under Commonwealth operative control, “they should remain under the administrative jurisdiction of Ukraine.”

That position has Commonwealth military commanders openly concerned that confusion over ownership of the 176 nuclear missiles left in Ukraine could lead to dangerous instability.

Marshal Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov, the Commonwealth’s top armed forces commander, complained this week that the nuclear weapons in Ukraine are essentially without an owner. “At present, there are weapons, they are functioning, but there is no jurisdiction of any state over them,” he told reporters, saying the missiles’ legal limbo has created problems for the Russian experts needed to service them.

But Shaposhnikov made it clear for the first time that Russia has total physical control over any nuclear launch. Ukraine has the theoretical right to veto a launch from its territory, he said, but “that is only an organizational veto, not a technical one.”

Shaposhnikov and Russian defense officials are expected to press Ukraine on the issue of nuclear ownership at today’s summit.

Ukraine is expected to resist. “Everything that is located in Ukraine . . . is the indisputable property of Ukraine,” Bizhan said.

Once again, the Commonwealth summit appeared likely to end in deadlock between Ukraine and Russia.

Designed as a “civilized divorce mechanism” for former Soviet republics, the Commonwealth summits have aimed to support international trade in the region and foster political cooperation. But many of the 11 member states have reached a dangerous crossroads, with internal dissent rising and a cluster of wars undermining their stability.

The presidents of the former Soviet republics, including Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia, now face a choice that will influence the world for decades: whether to turn away from one another and concentrate on their respective regions or to build afresh the links that bound them in the Russian and Soviet empires.

In Ukraine, the only country in the Commonwealth that can act as a foil for Russia’s dominance, political and social pressure may force Kiev either to pull out of the Commonwealth or to sign the proposed charter and risk losing its prized independence after 300 years of quasi-colonial dominance.

Until now, Ukraine has played a role similar to Britain’s in the European Community, pushing for a single economic market but balking at any attempts at political unification. But for the first time in Kiev, political groups have now split into a confrontational mix of eastern, Russified Ukrainians versus European-oriented western and central Ukrainians.

Social pressure underlies the rise in political tension. Inflation, running at 50% a month according to the Ministry of Economics, and the drop of the Ukrainian quasi-currency, the karbovanets, by 100% against the dollar in the past two months have both had a disastrous effect on living standards.

Earlier this month in Sevastopol, the military headquarters of the disputed Black Sea Fleet, 5,000 demonstrators shouted pro-Russian slogans and demanded that not only the fleet but also the Crimean Peninsula--which has been the subject of dispute between Moscow and Kiev--should become Russian.

Opposition to the Ukrainian government is spearheaded by the Ukrainian Socialist Party, staffed by former Communists. Some of its policies, such as its campaign to raise minimum wages and pensions, make good sense to Ukrainians. But behind these ideas is an agenda aimed at reviving the union with Russia. Such a move, if publicly stated, would put it, and millions of supporters, into direct confrontation with a nascent, weak Ukrainian Establishment that has only just accepted the need to reform.