President Told Soviets Want Afghan Solution

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev told President Reagan at Geneva that he wants to negotiate a withdrawal of his troops from the six-year-old war in Afghanistan, and Soviet-American talks on the issue may begin soon, U.S. officials said Friday.

Reagan told a small group of journalists at the White House that he and Gorbachev “had quite a discussion” of Afghanistan during the summit meeting that ended Thursday. “Out of this came an evidence that they want a solution to this problem,” the President said.

National security adviser Robert C. McFarlane went further, saying that the Administration wants to begin low-profile talks on the issue soon.

‘Basis for a Solution’

“I’d expect it to go off the headlines for a while, and the United States will not have any comment on it,” he said. “But we hope we can engage and establish the basis for a political solution.

“The prospect is that if we can engage--probably first at a subordinate level--and begin to explore options, that there may be some possibility of solving that,” he said.

The new Soviet willingness to talk on Afghanistan surprised officials, who were rebuffed on the issue only three weeks ago when Secretary of State George P. Shultz tried to bring it up during discussions in Moscow.

If the new talks lead toward a withdrawal of the more than 100,000 Soviet troops defending the Marxist regime in Kabul against U.S.-supported rebels, it would be one of the few concrete results of the summit.

Price for Withdrawal

Administration officials warned that it remains uncertain whether an agreement is possible. One noted that Gorbachev will almost certainly demand a complete end to U.S. and other Western aid to the rebels as his price for withdrawal.

“It is going to take some months to explore (the) options,” McFarlane said.

Reagan said he told Gorbachev, in one of the “fireside chats” between the two leaders in Geneva, that he favors political solutions in Afghanistan and other trouble spots, under which outside forces would withdraw and governments would be formed under international supervision.

“Between us . . . we could have the power and the ability to withdraw the outside forces and then to form groups, perhaps multinational groups, that could help to supervise and allow the people in these countries where the troubles were to arrive at their own idea of what they wanted,” the President said.

Reagan said Gorbachev “did express the belief that they (the Soviets) were in (Afghanistan) in support to the government, and I felt constrained to point out that the government was the one that they had put there.”

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December, 1979, to prop up the Marxist regime, which seized power a year earlier with support from Moscow. The invasion sparked an outcry around the world and was a major factor in chilling U.S. relations with the Soviet Union after more than a decade of detente.

Since then, Soviet leaders have made periodic attempts to explore a political settlement, including formal talks with the United States in 1982 and earlier this year, but with little success.

Chinese, Saudi Aid, Too

Meanwhile, covert aid to the rebels from the United States, China and Saudi Arabia has steadily increased, reaching about $400 million this year--more than $250 million of it from the CIA, according to some sources.

Neither side has achieved a clear advantage in the guerrilla war, in which the Soviets have suffered an estimated 15,000 dead.

Beyond Afghanistan, Reagan said that Gorbachev also asked him about areas “where we declared that these were of vital interest to us”--an apparent reference to Nicaragua, where the United States is financing a rebellion against the Sandinista government.

“I said, ‘Yes, of course, there were areas of vital interest,’ ” Reagan added, “but I said, ‘we don’t have them occupied with troops, and we’re not fighting there with our troops or with proxies.’ ”

The two delegations in Geneva also touched on the Middle East, the Iran-Iraq War, Indochina and Angola, officials reported.

Differences on Mideast

McFarlane told an audience at the Geneva University Institute for Higher Studies that, although differences between the two sides on the Mideast are “not marginal,” they are also “not irreconcilable,” the Associated Press reported.

He placed priority on developing a common U.S.-Soviet approach to terrorism, adding, “I think recent events have given us some prospect that Gorbachev may see the wisdom and self-interest of dealing with this fundamental issue of use of force.”