WASHINGTON - The government of India is "not a party" to a tentative settlement reached last week by Union Carbide Corp. and U.S. lawyers over the December 1984 poison-gas leak in Bhopal , India, and it is likely to oppose the agreement vigorously in federal court, a government lawyer said.

A Carbide spokesman confirmed Sunday that the firm has agreed to pay $350 million into a special Bhopal fund that he said would produce between $500 million and $600 million "over a period of time" for the tens of thousands of victims of the disaster.

One lawyer who negotiated the agreement said it calls for Carbide to pay out the money over a period of eight to 10 years with the payments to victims administered by U.S. Judge John F. Keenan in New York.

But the tentative agreement, reached late last week after months of negotiations in New York City, ran into fierce criticism Sunday that some lawyers said could torpedo the proposal even before the key parties have signed off. At the same time, lawyers in the case engaged in a new round of bickering over who had the legal authority to represent the Bhopal victims - an issue that never has been resolved by Judge Keenan.

"The government of India has neither agreed to nor is a party to any settlement," said Bruce Finzen, a lawyer with the Minneapolis law firm of Robins, Zelle, Larson & Kaplan. "We are the only valid legal representatives of the victims."

But Stanley Chesley, a Cincinnati plaintiff's lawyer who negotiated the agreement with Carbide, said the Indian government has no valid legal claims in the Bhopal litigation.

"They don't represent the individual victims," Chesley said of the Indian government. "The only people who can do that are their lawyers."

Finzen said the Indian government will continue to oppose any pact that does not provide "full and fair compensation for each and every victim."

"It has been our position from day one that there won't be any settlement without the government's participation," he said.

Chesley emphasized that "there is no piece of paper" that has been signed by the parties and that some key issues remain unresolved.

Carbide said it would sign off only if the agreement "settles all claims with finality." And Rob Hager, a Washington lawyer appointed by Keenan to represent public-interest groups involved in the case, said the $350 million figure was "ludicrous" and would provide only about $7,000 in medical and other expenses for each of the victims.

"By American jury standards, this is laughably low," said Hager. "We will oppose this, no question about it."

The Bhopal accident generally has been considered the world's worst industrial disaster. About 2,000 people were killed and tens of thousands of others were injured when a cloud of highly toxic methyl isocyanate leaked from a Union Carbide plant and spread over the city of Bhopal on Dec. 3 , 1984.