End Afghan War, Reagan Urges Soviets : Warns of a ‘Higher Price’; World Protests Mark 7th Anniversary

President Reagan and other world leaders marked the seventh anniversary of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan on Saturday, urging Moscow to withdraw its troops from the stalemated guerrilla war.

Reagan, who has sent advanced Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Afghanistan’s Muslim rebels, pledged that the United States will continue its multimillion-dollar aid to their fight, saying, “The Soviets must be made to understand that they will continue to pay a higher and higher price until they accept the necessity for a political solution.”

The governments of China, Britain, France, West Germany and Egypt were among others issuing statements calling for withdrawal of the estimated 117,000 Soviet troops who are fighting to defend the pro-Moscow regime.

Futile Soviet Effort

State Department officials have described the war as increasingly unwinnable for the Soviet Union, which sent its troops across its southern border into Afghanistan in 1979 to put down a widespread uprising against the Marxist government in Kabul.

U.S. officials estimate that 10,000 to 12,000 Soviet servicemen have been killed in the last seven years of guerrilla war, without clearly gaining the upper hand against the rebels. Estimates of Afghan casualties vary widely, but officials say more than 250,000 have died, including many civilians as well as rebels and government troops.

At the same time, the war has destroyed hundreds of villages, crippled Afghanistan’s agricultural economy and sent millions of Afghan refugees fleeing across borders to neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

Bolstered by Outside Aid

Millions of dollars in aid from the United States, China and other countries has kept the refugees alive and enabled the guerrillas, most of whom are Muslim fundamentalists, to keep fighting despite Soviet advantages in equipment. In recent months, the rebels have overrun several Afghan army posts, seized parts of two major cities and maintained their ability to range across much of the countryside.

State Department analysts have said that the guerrillas do not have the power to defeat the Soviet army in the field, but neither can the Soviets crush the rebellion--an impasse that has turned the war into a test of which side is more willing to keep fighting, comparable to the U.S. experience in Vietnam.

“Given current trends, the stalemate is likely to continue and the violence will escalate,” a State Department report concluded earlier this month.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has appeared increasingly interested in ending the war, which he recently described as “a bleeding wound” for the Soviet Union. Gorbachev said earlier this month that he wants to withdraw his troops and would accept a “neutral” Afghanistan as the outcome of negotiations.

Radio Moscow said Saturday that Gorbachev is “convinced that the situation can be settled” but added that the United States should stop its aid to the rebels to bring about an end to the war.

The United Nations has been holding negotiations toward a settlement of the war for more than four years, but the talks have been deadlocked over the timetable for a Soviet withdrawal.

The Reagan Administration has agreed to stop aid to the rebels once Moscow begins to withdraw its troops, but only if the withdrawal is completed quickly. The Soviet Union has offered to pull out over a period of several years, but the United States, Pakistan and the Afghan rebel alliance have rejected that time frame because it would allow the Soviets to continue their attacks on the rebels.

A new round of negotiations is scheduled to begin in Geneva in February.

‘Realistic Timetable’

“If the Soviets truly want peace, let them present at Geneva a realistic timetable for the withdrawal of their troops from Afghanistan,” Reagan said in a written statement released here Saturday. “The United States, which has always supported a negotiated political solution to the war in Afghanistan, will place no barriers in the Soviets’ way should they decide to negotiate seriously.”

Meanwhile, he said, “As long as the Soviets and their Afghan surrogates continue to wage a war which threatens extermination of an entire people, that people will have the support of the international community--and our support--for their resistance.”

In London, British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe said his government “and the rest of the world look to the Soviet Union to agree to a rapid and complete withdrawal of its forces.”

In Peking, China’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling an early withdrawal of Soviet troops “the key to the settlement of the question of Afghanistan.” The French External Relations Ministry called on the Soviet Union to “renounce the illusory temptation of force and finally agree to undertake the road to a negotiated settlement.”

Japan, Italy, Denmark and Egypt issued similar statements.

Worldwide Demonstrations

Afghan refugees and exiles also demonstrated in cities around the world against the Soviet occupation of their homeland. In Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, more than 10,000 marched and chanted “Death to Gorbachev!” In Washington, about 400 gathered near the Soviet Embassy, waved green Islamic banners and burned a red flag to chants of “We Want Freedom!”

In Los Angeles, about 200 demonstrators assembled downtown outside the 1st Street entrance to City Hall to join in protest Saturday afternoon. Later, they marched along Spring Street and Broadway, carrying placards denouncing the Soviet intervention.

A sprinkling of the Los Angeles protesters wore Afghan costumes, and Nazif Shahrani, a spokesman for the Islamic Assn. of Afghan Students which sponsored to protest, said that about 6,000 Afghan refugees live in the Los Angeles area.

Some demonstrators joined in the traditional noontime Muslim prayer, conducted outside City Hall, before the demonstration.

‘Deepest Anger, Outrage’

Shahrani, an assistant professor of anthropology at UCLA and one of the those who spoke to the gathering before the march began from the City Hall steps, told the demonstrators, “We are gathered here to once again condemn the long, devastating and immoral war in our homeland . . . to express our deepest anger and deepest sense of outrage (against the Soviet Union).”

Times staff writer Jerry Cohen contributed to this story from Los Angeles.