Afghan Rebels Reject Offer of Truce as Sham

Afghan leader Najib offered anti-communist Muslim guerrillas an indefinite cease-fire, but guerrilla leaders today called the proposal “a sham” and rejected it.

The Soviet press agency Tass said Najib called on the guerrillas to observe a truce beginning Jan. 15. Tass said the Afghan government made the offer with the hope of opening a dialogue with the guerrillas. It said Najib threatened to retaliate against those who continue fighting.

Muslim tribes have been fighting a guerrilla war since the April, 1978, revolution in the Central Asian nation that overthrew a constitutional monarchy and installed a Marxist government.

Party Leaders Addressed

Tass said Najib made his announcement Thursday at an extraordinary meeting of the leadership of Afghanistan’s Marxist ruling People’s Democratic Party. His government is aided by about 115,000 Soviet soldiers in its efforts to crush the Muslim insurgents.

In Pakistan, where the Afghan guerrillas are based, guerrilla leader Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi, who heads the Movement for Islamic Revolution in Afghanistan, said in a statement, “The cease-fire offer is not acceptable to us. . . . It is a sham and a deception.”

Mohammedi, who is also the spokesman of an alliance of the seven biggest guerrilla organizations called Islamic Unity of Afghan Moujahedeen, said “We cannot trust the Soviet puppets in Kabul.”

Complete Victory Sought

“The Afghan Moujahedeen and the people of our country will never give up the fighting, which aims at a complete victory and ousting the Soviets and their communist henchmen out of our Afghanistan,” he said.

He added: “How can there be a cease-fire with Soviets still in Afghanistan, and fighting?”

Gulbaddin Hikmatyar, president of the Islamic Front guerrilla group, also rejected the truce offer.

“The war will go on until the expulsion of the last Soviet soldier from Afghanistan,” he said in a statement. “If the communist government in Kabul wants a cease fire in Afghanistan, there is only one way, and that is a total and complete withdrawal of all Soviet troops from our country.”