Gorbachev Ploy Angers Yeltsin, Embarrasses Bush : Diplomacy: The Russian leader asserts his independence by snubbing an invitation.

MOSCOW —  President Mikhail S. Gorbachev tried to use the Soviet-American summit to demonstrate his political mastery over archrival Boris N. Yeltsin, but the maneuver backfired Tuesday, further dramatizing the sharp division that still plagues the Soviet Union at a time of profound crisis.

And for President Bush, caught in the middle as he tried to deal simultaneously with both, the affair underscored the warnings from some American specialists on the Soviet Union that this policy could thrust Washington deep into Soviet politics, choosing friends and making enemies.

Although Marlin Fitzwater, Bush’s press secretary, shrugged off his President’s embarrassment, saying again that the United States did not see an “either-or” choice between the central government and the republics, a senior U.S. diplomat commented, “This is a risky game, and we got burned.”

Gorbachev had invited the populist Russian leader to join the Soviet delegation meeting President Bush in the Kremlin at noon Tuesday. Seemingly a gesture of conciliation, it was in fact a ploy calculated to co-opt the popular Russian president as much as to bring him into Kremlin policy-making.

But Yeltsin, once again reasserting his independence, refused to attend the meeting and the working lunch that followed, saying later through an aide that he did not intend to be “a theater extra.”

And Bush--who has tried to back Gorbachev but encourage the more liberal Yeltsin as well as to develop a way to deal with both the central government in Moscow and the country’s constituent republics, including Yeltsin’s giant Russian Federation--suddenly found himself caught in the middle of the Kremlin scrap.

Gorbachev clearly emerged as the principal loser, however, with Yeltsin deftly outmaneuvering him even as some of Gorbachev’s assistants were celebrating the inclusion of Yeltsin and of Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, president of the Kazakh republic in Soviet Central Asia, in the delegation as a demonstration of the country’s emerging political unity and the acceptance of Gorbachev’s leadership.

“The composition of the delegation reflects the new, federal nature of our country,” Vitaly N. Ignatenko, Gorbachev’s press secretary, had told journalists Monday evening. “This is quite an important development, particularly in view of all that has gone on between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin in the past.”

Yeltsin, who met Bush later in his own Kremlin office for nearly a hour, was adamant in asserting his independence and that of Russia. And he was scathing in his characterization of Gorbachev’s invitation to take part in the talks.

“I believe this is something that dates back to the stagnation years when we had mass audiences,” Yeltsin said in an interview on the Cable News Network, referring to the late Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev’s habit of lining his conference table with sycophantic officials.

“I don’t think that I fit into a voiceless mass audience,” the outspoken Yeltsin continued. “I believe this kind of mass audience is . . . well, for other people.”

Pavel I. Voshchanov, a Yeltsin spokesman, said that for Yeltsin, considering his own meeting with Bush, “it would have been just illogical” to sit at Gorbachev’s side. “He did not want to be a ‘theater extra,’ ” Voshchanov added.

Yeltsin also felt, Voshchanov said, that it would have been “unethical” for him to participate without the presidents from the other republics who have taken part in negotiations with Gorbachev on the future of the Soviet Union as a federal state.

Ignatenko, questioned at a briefing with Fitzwater, tried to explain away Yeltsin’s refusal to take part in Gorbachev’s meeting with Bush. “There is nothing wrong here,” he said.

Gorbachev, Nazarbayev and Yeltsin, meeting to resolve differences over taxation in the reconstituted Soviet Union, had agreed that Yeltsin’s “involvement in those negotiations will take exactly the form of his meeting with President Bush in the Kremlin,” Ignatenko said.

That meeting had, in fact, lasted until 3 a.m. Tuesday as the three leaders thrashed out an agreement on future tax policy that should clear the way for the signing of a proposed Union Treaty, which will provide a new political and constitutional basis for the country.

Yeltsin later came as one of the top Soviet guests to the state dinner that Gorbachev gave for Bush in the Kremlin. Making a grand entrance, by himself, as the last guest, he greeted Gorbachev and Bush warmly and then began animated conversations first with Raisa Gorbachev and then with Barbara Bush, escorting both into dinner. Yeltsin was seated at Gorbachev’s table, and the two appeared to be on the best of terms personally.

“A question remains: Why Russia and Kazakhstan?” Yeltsin had said to CNN earlier as he explained his refusal to attend Gorbachev’s Kremlin meeting with Bush. “We have many republics. . . . Why only these two? Is it intended to use those two republics as silent members of the delegation?

“President Gorbachev meets many delegations, many presidents, and I don’t feel I’m obliged to be involved in all those negotiations,” he continued. “After all, those leaders and delegations also meet with me.”

Yeltsin said that under the proposed Union Treaty, Russia and the other national republics are entitled to pursue their own, independent foreign policies, with the central government only coordinating.

“We have different republics today,” Yeltsin said. “This should be borne in mind by us, and I told this to President Bush.”

He told reporters after his meeting with Bush that they had discussed the Union Treaty and the delays in its signing. Russia, he continued, plans to sign a formal agreement with the United States to establish a direct, formal relationship as soon as the Union Treaty is signed.

Bush, in turn, praised Yeltsin and described his visit to the United States last month as “a big hit” and “a very positive step in the overall relationship between the United States and Russia and the United States and the Soviet Union.”

Yeltsin, who signed an agreement Monday effectively recognizing the independence of the Baltic republic of Lithuania, scored yet another point off Gorbachev on the sensitive Baltic issue.

“President Bush and I share the same policy regarding the Baltic states,” he said, “but, unfortunately, the president of the (Soviet) Union, President Gorbachev, has a different policy toward the Baltics.”

But Yeltsin made clear that there are limits to his challenge of Gorbachev.

“I will not run in the next election (for president of the Soviet Union),” he said. “I want to tell President Gorbachev that straightaway, so that he doesn’t have this headache now.”