U.S. Offers Ukraine Aid, Security Pledges : Diplomacy: Clinton’s special envoy says Washington is willing to mediate disputes between Kiev and Moscow.

The Clinton Administration offered Ukraine a package of economic aid and security assurances Monday in the hope of shaping the former Soviet republic’s future as a Western-aligned state without nuclear arms.

U.S. presidential envoy Strobe Talbott announced the initiative after a 40-minute meeting with Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, whose country has balked at ratifying treaties to give up the 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 37 strategic bombers it inherited from the Soviet Union.

Moving to calm fears that Russia might threaten its independence after Ukraine gives up those weapons, Talbott told reporters that the United States is willing to mediate in any dispute between the Slavic neighbors.

“We told our Ukrainian hosts and friends that the United States would like to find a way to serve as a facilitator in the complex relations that now exist between Ukraine and Russia,” said Talbott, who will go from here to Moscow. “We would like to use the fact that we have good relations with both Ukraine and Russia in order to help them in any way we can to regulate some problems.”

He also announced the creation of a U.S.-Ukrainian working group that will oversee defense cooperation between the two countries and American aid to Ukrainian companies that are passing from state control to private hands.

Talbott, who is President Clinton’s ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet republics, announced no dollar figure on the aid package at his news conference. But members of the Ukrainian Parliament who met with him earlier said they were told that U.S. aid could total $700 million.

In any case, Talbott led a high-powered delegation representing the National Security Council, Defense Department, State Department and the Treasury. The timing of the visit is critical because the Parliament is due to debate Ukraine’s military role in the post-Soviet world later this month.

Ukraine, a country of 52 million people, is a major player in the former Soviet Union. U.S. officials say it could serve as a crucial buffer between Russia and Eastern Europe if Russia fails to make a peaceful transition from communism. American officials are also determined that Russia should be the sole inheritor of Soviet nuclear weapons.

Ukrainian lawmakers and other officials have said they are reluctant to ratify the START I treaty to limit nuclear arms and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to relinquish them altogether, mostly out of fear over rising nationalism in Russia.

Officials here have complained of U.S. pressure and said American policy toward the former Soviet Union is too narrowly focused on helping Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin. They were infuriated when Clinton refused to meet Ukrainian Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma during Kuchma’s visit to Washington last month.

Talbott’s visit here, intended to overcome Ukrainian resentment, got off to a rough start. Upon arrival here Sunday, he was told that neither Kravchuk nor Kuchma would see him. Eventually, the meeting with the president came through.

In an interview with the newspaper Holos Ukrainy (Voice of Ukraine) on Sunday, Talbott said U.S.-Ukrainian relations were under “intense review.”

“The word ‘pressure’ will not appear in the vocabulary of our side of the dialogue,” he was quoted as saying.

On Monday, Talbott said his meetings here had “demonstrated that a new state and a new Administration have been able to turn over a new leaf in their relations.”

He indicated that talks with Ukraine on nuclear issues would continue “in a broader context, in the context of Ukraine’s very legitimate requirements for maximum security.”

Ukrainian officials were also hopeful that relations will improve.

“We have every reason to believe that starting from now we have opened the way for new approaches and ideas that hopefully will allow us to go further and give a new, fresh shape to the Ukrainian-American relationship,” Deputy Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk said Monday evening.