NEWS ANALYSIS : End Run Around Moscow Is Key to U.S. Aid Strategy : Innovation: Clinton program’s goal is to strengthen relationships throughout Russia, not just with Kremlin.

VANCOUVER, Canada —  The aid package that President Clinton unveiled at his weekend summit with Russia’s Boris N. Yeltsin is modest in dollar value but includes an innovation that could ultimately change the basic chemistry of the U.S.-Russian relationship.

Beneath the technical jargon of the Clinton package is an attempt to bypass the central government in Moscow and create a network of direct relationships between the United States and local reformers and entrepreneurs across the vast sweep of Russia.

By launching an “enterprise fund” run by American venture capitalists, sending hundreds of advisers to local governments and promoting increased trade and investment by U.S. firms, Clinton and his aides are embarking upon a major shift in the Russian assistance strategy. It could hasten the disintegration of the system of centralized power built over centuries by the Bolsheviks and the czars.

Ultimately, some American officials add, if the government in Moscow ever falls into unfriendly hands, the United States aid will have strengthened reformers in local areas; they might resist the reimposition of dictatorial rule.

Even Clinton’s proposal to construct single-family homes for demobilized Red Army officers who now face impoverishment has a political edge--the houses, officials said, will be built only “in areas where local authorities are committed to market economic reforms.”

The idea, Clinton and aides say, is not only to keep assistance away from the central government bureaucracy, where it could easily disappear, but also to help build the kind of decentralized, private-sector institutions that are a basic feature of democratic Western societies.

“Three-quarters of this money will be distributed not government-to-government, but will go to benefit the private sector . . . and will go outside the central apparatus,” Clinton said at his news conference on Sunday.

Strobe Talbott, Clinton’s special envoy and Russian aid czar, observed: “We are not investing just in one man; we’re investing in a process (of) reform. Boris Yeltsin is the leader of that process. There are other reformers throughout that country and . . . in that political establishment--and they are the targets of our initiatives to engage with the Russian economy.”

The Vancouver summit was, thus, not only the first U.S.-Russian meeting dominated by the issue of economic aid but also the first where two presidents discussed stripping one of their governments of much of its power.

Yeltsin did not embrace the theme of decentralization with visible enthusiasm; the main virtue of sending aid to local areas and enterprises, he said, is that it will make control easier, by “enabling us to monitor the expenditure of each and every line item.”

But the Russian president’s aides acknowledge that the decentralization of Russian society is already well under way and that the American focus on local reformers will only accentuate an existing trend. “It’s happening with us or without us,” said one Russian official.

American officials say that one of their aims is to “reward” local leaders who have promoted economic reforms by sending aid their way--and to make less progressive leaders envious of their colleagues’ access to Western help.

The approach is still largely untested. It is not clear, for example that local governments in Russia--even reformist ones--are immune to the inefficiency and corruption rife in Moscow.

Even in the private sector, as those adventurous American investors who have ventured into Russia have already learned, there are as many ways to lose money in the oil fields of Siberia as there are in the ministries of the capital.

But Clinton aides are enthusiastic over their policy; they are Democrats suddenly infused with a Republican faith that they can solve almost any problem by liberating the suppressed energies of the private sector--in Russia, anyway. “This is the moral equivalent of an arms control agreement,” beamed one Clinton aide, the aid package in hand.

Among the innovative parts of the package, he pointed to the $50-million enterprise fund, intended to expand rapidly to more than $100 million next year. “We’re going to turn it over to people from Wall Street . . . and tell them, ‘You guys manage this,’ ” he said. “The United States government shouldn’t be deciding what private enterprises to invest in.”

And he said Clinton’s project to build 450 homes for demobilized Russian army officers could eventually become the nucleus of a program to build a more efficient Russian housing industry.

The new homes--single-family houses “because that’s what the Russians wanted”--will be built in several new communities in the region of St. Petersburg. They are projected to cost roughly $10,000 each. Some of the homes may be built by Habitat for Humanity, the Americus, Ga.-based housing organization that former President Jimmy Carter has promoted.

Along with the houses, officers will receive job training for re-entry into civilian life.

“That’s the most exciting individual project--but also the most difficult,” the Clinton aide said.

All these programs are designed to go into effect immediately, with money already in the Treasury, officials said. But most of them are designed to expand.

As for his dealings with American taxpayers, Clinton, until now, has approached them like a salesman with a loss leader: All these intriguing programs, he says, can be paid for with money already set aside.

And, to make the idea even more palatable, much of the initial aid program will bring benefits to key sectors of the American economy: farmers, who will sell almost $900 million in food in the largest part of the aid package, and the depressed oil and gas-related industries, which will be able to sell as much as $2 billion in equipment and services under an Export-Import Bank credit authority scheduled for approval next week.

Once he has enticed the customer into the showroom, salesman Clinton will waste no time in closing the deal. Aides said the President plans to begin campaigning on Capitol Hill this week for a new, larger appropriation of aid--probably more than $1 billion--for the budget year that begins in October.

At the same time, he plans to work the telephones with his other prospects, leaders of the other wealthy countries in the Group of Seven industrialized nations: Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Canada. In a two-step strategy, Clinton wants them to pledge similar programs of direct aid, then to join America in a new program of multilateral economic assistance aimed at stabilizing the Russian economy overall; it could total more than $10 billion.

That fund, if all goes well, would go not to any local authorities in the Russian outback but to Yeltsin’s government in Moscow--a prospect that may help explain why Russia’s president was so willing to accede to smaller programs that could end up nurturing future rivals for the leadership of his country’s reformist wave.

Aid Plan’s Key Elements Details of the Russian aid package announced Sunday: WHERE THE MONEY GOES (in millions) * GRANTS $690.9 Food assistance $194.0 Technical cooperation $281.9 Dismantling nuclear weapons $215.0 * CREDITS $932.0 Grain sales $700.0 Export-Import Bank credits* $ 82.0 Overseas Private Investment Corp. credits* $150.0 * TOTAL $1,622.9 DETAILS OF THE AID * Agricultural credits: $700 million under the Food for Progress program to restore Russia’s access to U.S. agricultural markets for grains and other needed commodities. * Housing: $6 million to build 450 houses within 12 to 16 months for military officers who are being demobilized and returned to Russia. * Industrial conversion: $60 million to help Russia convert its government-owned industries to private enterprise; $50 million for a Russian-American “enterprise fund” to encourage joint U.S.-Russian business ventures; $38-million package to help repair and make more efficient oil pipelines. * Private investment: $150 million in Overseas Private Investment Corporation insurance for U.S. investments in Russia; $82 million in Export-Import Bank loans; $3 million to establish American business centers in Russia. * The Democracy Corps: One of the more striking parts of the Clinton aid plan, the $25-million program provides for intensive people-to-people contacts between Russians and Americans. A White House statement described the corps as “a broad coalition of American people and institutions devoted to expanding the momentum for democratization in Russia.” Under the plan, approximately 3,000 Russians will visit the United States this summer. * The two agencies arrange government-guaranteed loans to finance U.S. ventures abroad. Their purpose here is to diminish risk to American companies doing business with Russia Sources: White House Press Office; Times staff and wire reports

Aid Plan Depends on Leftovers The Clinton Administration said the package uses funds that already have been appropriated by Congress but had been bottled up. No further congressional action is needed. Here is what former President George Bush appropriated, what he spent and what Clinton proposes.

Bush Bush Obligated Clinton In millions: Appropriated (or spent) Proposed Import loan guarantees $50 $50 $232 Technical assistance 256 100 282 Medical 120 120 30 Food aid 440 400 194 Export credits 2,700 950 700 Nuclear cleanup 406 90 215 TOTAL: $4 billion $1.7 billion $1.6 billion

Source: White House, Times staff