Program for Russia Atom Scientists to Start : Diplomacy: Project aims to keep weapons experts from defecting to outlaw states. Moscow is blamed for delay.

The United States and Russia are only now ready to embark on a program announced two years ago to prevent nuclear scientists from the former Soviet Union from selling their skills to outlaw states such as Libya.

U.S. officials blame Russian political infighting for the delay in launching the project, which is finally about to get under way with a scheduled meeting of the directors of a science center that is supposed to offer the scientists peacetime jobs.

The officials say the plan still is vitally needed, even though the predicted rush of defections by scientists has not materialized--at least not yet.

Economic conditions have deteriorated steadily for the once-pampered scientists who made the Soviet Union a nuclear superpower, a State Department official said. Many scientists have rejected job offers from Iran, North Korea, Libya and other countries looking for backdoor entry into the nuclear club, but they may be unable to hold out much longer.

Some lower-level scientists have already left, most of them for China, which is already a nuclear -power. But top scientists who could design a nuclear bomb from memory have stayed put.

The idea of aiding nuclear scientists arose in February, 1992, when James A. Baker III, then secretary of state, visited a top-secret nuclear laboratory on the Siberian side of the Ural Mountains. Baker was told that the scientists who work there were eager to turn their talents to civilian research but that the Russian government lacked the funds to finance it. The next day, Baker and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin announced plans to create a science center to fund peacetime projects.

The plan was launched with great urgency. Even so, no scientific jobs have been created and nothing much has been done.

The old Russian Parliament refused to ratify the plan because, U.S. officials speculate, it became embroiled in political warfare between the lawmakers and Yeltsin. The Russian president revived the idea by decree after he closed down Parliament last October. Although action by the newly elected Parliament probably will be required eventually, the organization has provisional authorization to go into operation.

Early next month, the board of directors of the proposed center--representing the United States, Russia, the European Union and Japan--will meet in Moscow to organize and to consider proposals for projects that create jobs.

In the two years since the Baker and Yeltsin announcement, the EU (formerly called the European Community) and Japan have joined Washington in supplying money for the project. About $70 million is available--$25 million from the United States, about $28 million from the EU and $17 million from Japan.

That is little more than seed money, U.S. officials admit. However, they say that if the plan works the way they hope it will, the Russian science projects will soon begin to produce revenue that can make them self-sustaining.

“When the science center concept was first conceived, we were just beginning to deal with dislocations from the demise of the Soviet Union,” a State Department official said. “We suspected that (mass defection of nuclear scientists) was something that might happen.

“We are now at the point where the impact on weapons facilities is real. These centers which once were sheltered and privileged have now experienced the kind of dislocation that might cause people to make life decisions.”

With modern computers and modems, it may not even be necessary for a scientist to leave the country to go to work for Iran or some other nuclear aspirant.

During the Soviet period, the KGB could be counted on to prevent the emigration of scientists or anyone else with even a remote connection with the country’s defense Establishment.

The Russian government has taken steps to prevent scientists from defecting, but U.S. officials say that Moscow’s grip is becoming less sure as democracy takes hold.

“To a fairly substantial extent, the Russian government knows who is in its scientific community, the 200 or so top designers and theoreticians,” the State Department official said.

“On the other hand, their ability to prevent them from going anywhere may be declining,” the official said. “How do you prevent someone from going to China and then to North Korea? . . . There are too many unknowns now.”