Afghanistan Stretching the Deadline

By William R. Doerner

"This week you should do your sightseeing," suggested United Nations Mediator Diego Cordovez to journalists gathered in Geneva last week. That advice was the first sign that the pace had slowed in what was to be the final round of talks aimed at settling Afghanistan's eight-year-old civil war. Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev had set March 15 as the target date for concluding the negotiations, promising that if it was met, Moscow would begin withdrawing its 115,000-member army of occupation from Afghanistan by May 15. Yet last week key negotiators, including Pakistani Minister of State Zain Noorani, whose government represents the mujahedin rebels, admitted that the putative deadline would pass without an agreement. Said Noorani: "It's out of the question."

Despite that looming failure, there were signs that prospects for an eventual accord, possibly one that would keep Gorbachev's May 15 timing intact, were far from bleak. For one thing, neither the Pakistanis nor the Soviet-backed Afghan regime was even hinting that the slipped deadline would provoke a walkout from the talks. For another, the Soviet representative at the negotiations, Ambassador-at-Large Nikolai Kozyrev, revealed that his government and the U.S. are conducting intensive and highly secret discussions on Afghanistan in Moscow and Washington. The ever persistent Cordovez has privately predicted that the bargaining could drag on. Summed up Noorani: "The important date is not the 15th of March; it's the 15th of May."

One major sticking point was a demand by Washington, voiced only two weeks ago, that any cutoff of U.S. military aid to the mujahedin must be matched by a "symmetrical cessation" of arms deliveries to the Afghan government by Moscow. Kozyrev contended that the Soviets have been providing military supplies to Afghanistan for decades and that any attempt to end such assistance amounts to interference in Soviet affairs. Said the Soviet negotiator: "It would be like Moscow asking the U.S. to end its military aid for Pakistan."

But Washington pointed out that the U.S. is being asked to serve as a guarantor of the eventual treaty, a position that would be impossible if one Afghan side is permitted to continue receiving outside arms and the other is denied them. As if to underscore the importance of the "symmetry" issue, the U.S. has again increased arms shipments to the Afghan rebels, whose supplies had been running seriously low.

The other major unresolved issue is the future shape of Afghanistan's government. Pakistan, which serves as the exile home of more than 2.5 million Afghan refugees, believes the treaty must at least provide a "mechanism" for a transitional government. Said Noorani: "The refugees in Pakistan are not going to return home as long as the regime in power is the same one that is responsible for the deaths of 1.2 million Afghans." Afghanistan's chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Abdul Wakil, insists the matter is a purely Afghan affair and last week accused Pakistan of seeking "to push the talks into frostiness and stalemate." Washington is sympathetic to Pakistan's position but not inclined to let it stand in the way of a settlement. "We don't think we should miss an opportunity over this issue," said a State Department official in Washington. "The priority has to be for the Soviets to get out."

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira/Washington and Ross H. Munro/Geveva