NEW YORK - The Union Carbide Corp. and lawyers for victims of the gas leak in Bhopal , India, have reached a tentative settlement of the tens of billions of dollars in damage claims from history's worst industrial disaster, say sources involved in the case.

Details of the settlement were provided Friday night and Saturday to The New York Times by people with close knowledge of the negotiations. They declined to be publicly identified because of the sensitivity of the case and instructions of the judge who is handling the case to keep the matter confidential. But they said the settlement was bona fide and that the final figure and conditions would change little, if at all, from what had been agreed.

The settlement, reached last week, calls for Carbide to pay $350 million for the deaths of more than 2,000 people and injury to 200,000 others from a chemical leak at its pesticide plant in central India on Dec. 2-3 , 1984. The settlement covers everyone harmed by the disaster even if they haven't filed suit.

Many legal and financial analysts had expected the figure to be in the $600 million range, and experts said it bodes well for Carbide, which recently survived a takeover attempt after being financially weakened by the accident.

The settlement is subject to final negotiations and requires the approval of U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan in Manhattan. It is more than triple Carbide's last publicized offer of $100 million. Sources said it would probably be finalized in six months or less.

Most surprising, sources close to the case said, is that the government of India is not part of the tentative settlement. India had claimed that it alone represented the victims, and had sought to exclude more than 100 U.S. attorneys suing on behalf of victims. Many of those attorneys traveled to Bhopal just after the accident to sign up thousands of victims as clients in what was widely criticized as a form of ambulance chasing.

U.S. attorneys and officials involved in negotiations in the past few months have contended with increasing intensity that the Indian government was not actively pursuing a settlement likely to be acceptable either to Carbide or the U.S. attorneys for the plaintiffs.

Those sources said India had wanted nearly $1 billion in damages and would not subject itself to a rigorous accounting of how the money would be dispensed, prompting concern by the attorneys that much of it would not reach the victims. There have been reports of corruption in the dispensing of food and other aid provided by the Indian government so far.

Some of those close to the case said one possibility in the settlement was to allow India and any individual victims to sue Carbide separately if they wished. Those sources said, however, that it would be difficult for another Bhopal plaintiff to win a case in a U.S court after a federal judge had already approved a settlement for the entire class of victims.

Carbide attorneys and those representing individual Indian victims declined to comment on the record Saturday. But one called it "a historic agreement." Another said: "The Indian government has achieved its goal. It got the maximum amount available from the legal system that provides the biggest awards."

An attorney for the Indian government, Bruce Finzen of Robins, Zelle, Larson & Kaplan in Minneapolis, said, "It would not be appropriate to make any comment about any proposed settlement at this time." He said the Indian government "will have a full and complete response when the time is appropriate."

The agreement was reached orally on Thursday after months of frequent meetings and hard bargaining, the sources said. It is now being reduced to writing and Keenan has been informed. He has not indicated whether he approves, they added. But he has been actively pushing both sides to negotiate. In order to allow the bargaining to proceed, he has delayed a ruling on whether the case should be heard here or in India.

The $350 million is in today's dollars, and indications are that at least part of it would be put into an interest-bearing fund that would help to pay the costs of continuing medical care for thousands of people less able to work because of lung ailments. A $5 million Carbide contribution last fall as interim relief would be applied to the settlement, the sources said.

Carbide has a reported $200 million in insurance and significant cash and credit reserves after it fought off a recent takeover bid by the GAF Corp. It could pay the full amount immediately, sources said. But both sides expect the payments to be stretched out over a number of years. The Indian government has suggested seven years, Carbide 10 years and the U.S. plaintiff attorneys 20 years.

The settlement figure is based on U.S. standards of compensation, sources close to the case said. As such, it represents an extraordinarily large amount of money by the economic standards of Bhopal , a poor central Indian city where the average annual wage is about $125 - less than 1 percent of the U.S. factory wage.