Azerbaijan on Friday became the eighth Soviet republic to declare independence, but Boris Yeltin's Russian Federation signed another border pact aimed at binding the republics together along economic lines.
More than half of the 15 republics have now declared their intent to break from Moscow. The others are Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Ukraine, Moldavia, Byelorussia and Georgia. Some of the republics are trying to gain bargaining power with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Yeltsin.Gorbachev's power has steadily declined since last week's failed coup. In the latest example of that, three top reformers snubbed him by saying Friday they will not join his key advisory group, the Security Council.
Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov said he, former Gorbachev adviser Alexander Yakovlev and former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze "decided not to take part in the Security Council." He did not say why they turned down Gorbachev.
By contrast, Yeltsin's power has dramatically increased since he led the opposition to the abortive takeover.
Yeltsin is now bypassing the central government and negotiating his own agreements with the other republics - some of which have grown increasingly nervous about Yeltsin's power and possible claims to land outside Russia.
Before the coup, Russia signed border agreements with the three Baltic republics. On Thursday, it signed a similar pact with the Ukraine.
The latest pact with Kazakhstan, the second biggest republic after Russia, honors their present border and urges republics to work to prevent the "uncontrolled disintegration" of the nation through new economic agreements.
The accord said the republics should make joint military decisions and that all republics should have control over KGB and Soviet Interior Ministry troops in their territories.
It also supported Kazakhstan's decree on Thursday that closed the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapons testing range.
Kazakhstan, where ethnic Russians slightly outnumber Kazakhs, has 15 percent to 20 percent of the Soviet Union's fixed-silo nuclear missiles. It also has two nuclear weapons testing ranges and a bomber base that probably is capable of handling nuclear arms.
On Thursday, protesters in Kazakhstan expressed concern about possible Russian land grabs in the wake of the coup.
Gorbachev said he sent a delegation to Kazakhstan to keep things from "snowballing," and Yeltsin also sent a group of Russian representatives.
Later, Yeltsin attempted to ease fears of Russian expansion plans.
"I want to state firmly that the collapse of the center is not tantamount to a collapse of the country, let alone Russia," Yeltsin said Thursday in an address broadcast on Radio Rossiya, which is controlled by his government.
"The striving to create a new, really free, really voluntary union of sovereign and, I stress, equal states remains strong," he said. "Full-blooded states and not phantoms will be united in the union."
While many of the independence-minded republics hope to gain negotiating power, Azerbaijani nationalists apparently acted Friday to further their longstanding goal of uniting with the Azerbaijani region across the border in northern Iran. The Iranian government is vehemently opposed to this.
In predominately Muslim Azerbaijan, absorbed into the Soviet empire in the 1920s, Christian Armenian rebels have battled for control of a northern enclave. The central government has often intervened in the fighting.
In other developments, Tass said Friday that authorities on Thursday night arrested suspended legislature speaker Anatoly Lukyanov, who is accused of having a role in the coup.
The Supreme Soviet legislature on Thursday stripped Lukyanov of his parliamentary immunity and voted to have him arrested and charged with treason, which is punishable by death. Lukyanov, a former law school colleague of Gorbachev's, has denied any role in the coup.