Bush backs Gorbachev's efforts to maintain unity

KIEV, U.S.S.R. President Bush admonished restless Soviet republics on Thursday to av"hopeless course of isolation" in their bid for more freedom. He warmly endorsed Mikhail Gorbachev's formula for holding the fractious nation together. Before ending a three-day Soviet visit, Bush also made a pilgrimage to Babi Yar, placing a wreath at the forested ravine where Nazis slaughtered Jews by the tens of thousands 50 years ago and vowing that "this sort of murder will never happen again." He used the stop here in the Ukraine as a platform to counsel restraint upon the republics in their demands for autonomy from Moscow. "We cannot tell you how to reform your society," said Bush, standing beneath a towering marble statue of Lenin in the Ukrainian parliament. "We will not try to pick winners and losers in political competition between republics ... and the center." That is your business. That's not the business of the United States of America, "he said. He rejected what he called "a false choice" between supporting Gorbachev or "independence-minded leaders throughout the U.S.S.R." But Bush lavished praise on the leader he left behind in Moscow, saying Gorbachev "has achieved astonishing things." "His policies of glasnost, perestroika and democratization point toward the goals of freedom, democracy and economic liberty," said Bush. To grumbles from some Ukrainian lawmakers, Bush praised the Union Treaty that Gorbachev and leaders of nine republics struck in April to hold nine republics together in a federation while loosening Kremlin control. Six other republics, including the three Baltic states, have disdained the treaty. The United States has never recognized the Soviet annexation of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. "We will maintain the strongest possible relationship with the Soviet government of President Gorbachev," said Bush. "But we also appreciate the new realities of life in the U.S.S.R. and therefore, as a federation ourselves, we want good relations, improved relations, with the republics." Bush spent six hours in this second-most-populous of Soviet republics before embarking on a 10-hour journey back to Washington.