U.S., Soviets Plan First Afghan Talks in 3 Years : No Date Set for Session on Asian Conflict; Meeting on Southern Africa Starts Thursday

U.S. and Soviet officials will meet soon to discuss conditions in Afghanistan for the first time in three years, a resumption of superpower regional talks that also will include a meeting on southern Africa, the State Department said Tuesday.

The talks on Afghanistan, where Soviet invading forces have been bogged down since 1979 in a conflict with anti-Communist guerrillas, are expected to take place sometime next month, although State Department officials said no date has been set. Richard W. Murphy, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, is expected to be the U.S. representative.

Crocker to Paris

In the talks on southern Africa, which will take place Thursday in Paris, the U.S. delegation will be headed by Chester A. Crocker, assistant secretary of state for African affairs and the chief author of the Reagan Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement” toward the white-minority government in South Africa. Vladilen M. Vasev, an Africa specialist, will lead the Soviet team.

U.S. officials said the meetings, and others that may be scheduled later on other regions, are intended to prevent misunderstandings by allowing each side to clarify its position.

Richard R. Burt, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, said the talks on regional problems “provide us a means of drawing a line for the Soviets and explaining what we can and cannot accept in terms of their aggressive behavior.”

Officials say the talks are not really negotiations because it is unlikely that either side will change its policy as a result of the meetings.

Despite the U.S. government’s modest expectations, the talks could bring Washington and Moscow a step closer to a business-as-usual relationship. U.S. and Soviet negotiators will also resume arms control talks later this week.

President Reagan proposed periodic U.S.-Soviet discussions on regional issues in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly last September. Although the Soviets accepted the plan in principle, the talks have been a long time coming. In the only such talks held previously, U.S. and Soviet officials met in Vienna in February to discuss the Middle East. Those talks produced no tangible results.

By coincidence, the last U.S.-Soviet regional talks on either Afghanistan or southern Africa occurred in 1982. At that time, the Afghanistan talks broke up without results when the Soviets balked at discussing their invasion of the land-locked, predominantly Muslim country.

Murphy attempted to raise the Afghanistan issue in February when he met Soviet Mideast specialist Vladimir P. Polyakov in Vienna. However, Polyakov refused to discuss the matter because the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s Near Eastern Division, which he heads, is not responsible for Afghanistan policy. The United States considers Afghanistan to be part of the Middle East and, therefore, under Murphy’s jurisdiction.

Soviet Drive Told

Announcement of the new round of talks coincided with reports by Western diplomats in the capitals of Pakistan and India on recent developments in the Soviet military effort to put down the Muslim-led Afghan rebellion against the Soviet-installed government of President Babrak Karmal. Afghanistan is closed to Western reporters.

Western sources in Islamabad, Pakistan, said that at least 10,000 Soviet troops backed by tanks, jets and helicopter gunships have launched one of the biggest offensives of the war in an effort to cut off guerrilla supply lines at the Pakistan border, the Associated Press reported.

The diplomats, speaking on condition that they not be identified, said Soviet troop formations and armored columns began moving out of the Afghan capital of Kabul earlier this month in preparation for the offensive in Konarha and Laghman provinces.

Scores of Soviet and Afghan aircraft have also been carrying troops and supplies to the provinces, which are in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, the sources said.

Helicopter Downed

In New Delhi, United Press International quoted a Western diplomat as saying that a Soviet helicopter was downed by Muslim rebels Tuesday in an attack that destroyed four Soviet tanks and burned a provincial governor’s office.

One of the diplomats quoted rebel reports as saying that Soviet soldiers had killed 17 people at a temple in the Kabul area.

“Soviet soldiers opened fire on civilians near a Hindu temple in the Mullah Shah area of Kabul on May 19,” he said. “Guerrilla sources said 17 people were killed.” He also cited reports of heavy fighting in the Panjshir Valley, a traditional rebel stronghold northeast of Kabul, but could provide no details.

The first word of the new U.S.-Soviet talks came in a speech Tuesday by Burt to the Washington World Affairs Council.

Burt’s speech was enlivened by a scuffle when Allan Ogden, an associate of radical politician Lyndon LaRouche, interrupted Burt with shouts of “Traitor!” A member of the audience responded by delivering several hard punches to Ogden’s face and pushing him out of the meeting. The assailant was removed from the meeting but later returned. Burt, apparently unaffected by the fray, completed his speech.