Recognition of New States Is Due Soon : Diplomacy: A U.S. official says 5 former Soviet republics that Baker just visited are due to be recognized first.

BRUSSELS —  The United States will recognize the independence of some of the former Soviet republics in the next 10 days and probably will recognize all of them eventually, a senior Administration official said Friday.

The official declined to set a timetable for establishing diplomatic relations but said the five republics that Secretary of State James A. Baker III visited this week--Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan--will be recognized “sooner rather than later.”

All 12 remaining republics of the dissolving Soviet Union are seeking U.S. recognition as a symbol that they have achieved the status of fully sovereign states. And most have sought to win American favor by promising democratic politics and free market economics.

In Washington, officials said the five republics Baker visited, along with Armenia, will be recognized as independent, sovereign countries even before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, which officials in Moscow have said would occur on Dec. 31. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tadzhikistan and Moldova will probably also win recognition at the same time, although no final decision has been made, one official said.

But two republics, Georgia and Azerbaijan, will not be recognized immediately, because their authoritarian governments have made no clear moves toward democracy, the officials said.

The move--which may come as early as Monday--will mark the Administration’s formal recognition that the Soviet Union no longer exists and that real political power now resides in the once-toothless governments of the republics.

It will also mean the fragmentation of the U.S.-Soviet relationship, once a high-tension dialogue between two nuclear superpowers, into 12 separate relationships with republics ranging in size from mighty Russia, with more than 150 million people and most of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, to tiny Armenia, with 3.3 million people and more enemies than weapons.

The Administration plans to open an embassy in the capital of each of the newly recognized states, he added. The United States has an embassy in Moscow, capital of both the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, and a consulate in Kiev, capital of Ukraine.

In Brussels, the senior Administration official said few of the leaders in the crumbling Soviet Union realize how difficult it will be to convert their stagnant, integrated and centrally planned economy into separate, free market nations.

He said that, even if all or most of the republics join the new Commonwealth of Independent States, there seems to be no possibility they can function as a single economy: “This is a tough process, trying to convert an economy that for 70 years has been the very antithesis of the free market. . . . This is all one economy--it ain’t much of an economy; it has been very unsuccessful, but it is all interlinked. Now all those things are going to be dissolved.”

Further, the official said, the leaders now holding power in the republics know even less of what is necessary for the creation of a free market economy than did the bureaucrats in the disbanded central government. Still, he said that most of the republics are making a concerted effort to comply with Washington’s principles for recognition.

Baker and other officials had said that recognition would depend on the republics’ records of holding free elections, moving toward free-market economic reforms, cooperating on efforts to ensure control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal and abiding by arms control treaties and other international commitments made by the Soviet Union.

By those standards, officials in Washington said, Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan (formerly Kirghizia) and Armenia clearly qualify.

But President Bush and his aides quickly decided that the standards should be interpreted loosely--in part to ensure that all four republics with nuclear weapons on their soil, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus (formerly Byelorussia) and Kazakhstan, will get the same level of recognition.

Officials are also debating whether it is proper to withhold recognition from other, non-nuclear republics to pressure them toward reform, or whether early recognition would encourage democratization more effectively. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tadzhikistan and Moldova fall into that category, one official said.

The senior Administration official in Brussels said the United States will judge the republics on the basis of “not whether they have gotten there but that they are trying.” For instance, he said, Belarus is not a democracy, but the government is in the process of adopting a democratic constitution and plans contested elections next June. The other four republics Baker visited this week are all led by freely elected presidents.

Conceding that all 12 republics probably will win U.S. recognition eventually, the official said “the nature of our relationship will depend on their adherence to these principles.”

The only absolute requirement is nuclear safety, the official said, adding that the United States would consider it a “very serious matter,” if any of the emerging nations refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But he said the assurances Baker received about the Soviet nuclear arsenal “are more than just adequate.”

In Washington, the Administration has been under pressure to recognize at least some of the republics since Dec. 1, when Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence. This week, Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin made a personal appeal to Baker to recognize his republic.

Kempster reported from Brussels and McManus from Washington.