Afghanistan Rebuff from the Rebels

By William R. Doerner

Increasingly, the signs seemed to point to a Soviet exit from Afghanistan before the end of 1988. Kremlin officials made no secret of their desire to bring home their 115,000 troops. Both the Soviet-backed regime of Afghan Leader Najibullah and the government of Pakistan, which supports the mujahedin rebels, predicted that the Geneva negotiations expected to resume in March under United Nations auspices would be the "last round" leading to a final agreement. But a sharply worded declaration from the guerrillas, blasting the Geneva talks and casting serious doubt on their willingness to accept a compromise settlement, dimmed hopes last week for a solution.

The rebel statement was issued shortly before the arrival in Islamabad of U.N. Under Secretary-General Diego Cordovez, who has mediated at the previous eleven rounds of Geneva talks between the Afghan and Pakistani governments. Yunis Khalis, chairman of the loosely knit alliance of seven mujahedin groups, refused to meet Cordovez. He accused the U.N. official of presiding over negotiations designed "to recognize the Kabul puppet government" and demanded that Moscow bargain directly with the rebels.

Khalis' outburst was also a pointed reply to earlier remarks by Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who has allowed the U.S.-supplied rebels to operate from his territory. In an interview with the New York Times, Zia said an interim government including members of the Soviet-backed ruling party would be "not much of a price to pay in my opinion." Khalis sought to make it clear that the rebels, not Zia, would be the judge of any such concessions.

Khalis, however, was not speaking with the full backing of his alliance's membership. Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, leader of the most important moderate guerrilla faction, criticized Khalis for failing to clear his statement with other mujahedin leaders. Gailani told TIME he favored talking with Cordovez. That way, he said, "at least he will know what our position is and pass it on" to the Soviets. Gailani's rebuff of a fellow rebel may be part of the jockeying for position in a post-Soviet power structure.

When the Soviets lifted a rebel siege of the strategically placed town of Khost at the end of December, some Western diplomatic observers and Pakistani analysts in Islamabad thought that would give them a pretext to declare victory in the eight-year-old war and begin pulling out. But the Soviets have so far refused to fix a firm timetable for their withdrawal. The rebels, meanwhile, seemed determined to keep up the pressure, as they demonstrated late last week at the funeral of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a onetime disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and in later years an anti-mujahedin leftist. Khan died in Pakistan at age 98 and was buried in the Afghan city of Jalalabad. Afghan and Pakistani authorities allowed a funeral procession of some 2,000 vehicles to enter Afghanistan under Soviet military escort for the burial, which was attended by Najibullah. Just as Khan's body was being lowered into the ground, two bombs ripped through a parking area about half a mile away, killing a dozen people and wounding many more.

With reporting by Ross H. Munro/Islamabad