Lack of Interim Afghan Regime Clouds Pending Accord

As clear as the first hints of impending spring, the scent of diplomatic success filled the crisp Geneva air Friday. The final parts of a settlement that would end eight years of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and restore peace seemed ready to fall into place.

Breezy and confident, U.N. special envoy Diego Cordovez wore the smile of a man about to accomplish the task so many had predicted was impossible. The Reagan Administration also sensed victory.

The agreement under consideration would commit Moscow to an unprecedented military and political retreat. An estimated 115,000 Soviet troops would go home and an unpopular Marxist government would be abandoned to its fate.

But if a historic agreement is at hand, there are ominous signs that peace in Afghanistan is not. Obscured by the flush of anticipation is a time bomb that few seem willing to risk trying to defuse.

Even greater turmoil may face war-torn Afghanistan if this issue is left unattended, as the Soviets, the Americans, the Kabul regime and Cordovez seem inclined to do.

The potentially destructive element is the lack of agreement among the many rival Afghan factions on an interim government to implement key parts of the settlement.

Everyone involved in the negotiations--Pakistan and the Marxist Kabul regime which communicate indirectly through the U.N. mediator, plus the United States and the Soviet Union, which will act as guarantors to the settlement--admit that the role of a transitional Afghan government is vital.

It will have to supervise the orderly return of 4.5 million refugees from Pakistan and Iran and administer elections for a permanent government in Afghanistan.

The departure of Soviet forces without a caretaker government in Kabul could unleash a power struggle among the Afghan political factions as bitter and bloody as the long guerrilla war has been, regional experts fear.

Guerrillas Want Role

Top Afghan resistance leaders have said they will ignore any settlement that does not ensure them a major role in a caretaker administration.

“There is little doubt that there will be turmoil if there is no change of government (in Kabul),” a Western diplomat here said.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, in a report issued Thursday, concluded that only a representative interim government could ensure the orderly return of the refugees.

“It would therefore seem imperative,” the report said, “that concerted efforts should be made in Afghanistan to establish an interim transitional government involving all the parties concerned.”

Despite the importance of an interim government, most of the participants in the Geneva talks treat the question as a sort of pariah that must not be permitted to infect any settlement reached here. At a news conference Wednesday, Cordovez brushed aside questions on the issue, insisting that it should not be linked to the Geneva talks.

“This should be left to the Afghans alone,” he said. “This cannot be part of an international negotiation.”

Asked about the possibility of factional fighting, he said that civil strife has always been part of life in Afghanistan, and added, “I have the feeling they want peace.”

After two days of talks this week, Cordovez seemed less cavalier with reporters Friday, even noting that he had tried to promote the idea of a broad-based transitional government last January in meetings with resistance leaders in Pakistan. But he left little doubt that lack of such a government would not be allowed to hold up a settlement.

Robert A. Peck, a deputy assistant secretary of state, said in congressional testimony last week that an interim government would be desirable, but he made it clear that a Geneva settlement and the Soviet troop departure are the first priority.

“The political future of Afghanistan, whether interim or final, lies with the Afghans themselves, and we cannot be certain when decisions may be made,” Peck said.

Fears Soviet Reversal

Although apparently sympathetic to the need for an interim government, Washington fears that holding up a settlement on that account could cause Moscow to re-evaluate its commitment to withdraw its troops. For Washington, that is too much to risk, diplomats here believe.

For leaders of the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, there are also advantages, though limited, in not pressing the issue. Lack of transitional arrangements provides a tenuous but real extension of life for them.

Only Pakistan has seriously pressed the interim government issue in Geneva. With over 3 million Afghan refugees camped in Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan’s President Zia ul-Haq desperately needs a settlement that will bring peace. For if the Soviet departure plunges Afghanistan into chaos, the refugees will stay where they are.

“For us, an interim government is not just important, it is vital,” a senior Pakistani diplomat said. “Otherwise it is a paper agreement, leaving refugees in Pakistan and an uncontrolled blood bath in Afghanistan.”

But Pakistan, isolated and under increased diplomatic pressure not to hold up a settlement, may be forced to give way.

Until last month, few people even considered the prospect that there might be no interim government. It was widely assumed that Moscow would insist on it as a condition of pulling out, in order to salvage a measure of power for its client regime.

Then, on Feb. 8, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev reversed Soviet policy and declared that the Soviet Union was prepared to begin withdrawing troops on May 15 if a settlement could be signed in Geneva by March 15. The question of an interim government in Kabul, he said, is up to the Afghans to decide.

Fundamental differences divide the rebel groups that have fought the Soviet-backed Kabul government over the past eight years.

The alliance of Afghan resistance groups based in Pakistan is riven with intrigue and suspicion. Its recent efforts to stitch together a proposal on an interim government was dismissed as a farce, even by some participants.

The alliance’s plan called for a supreme council made up of the leaders of the seven groups in the alliance, with a little-known man named Ahmed Shah as head of state. It offered seven of the 28 second-tier government posts to “good Muslims living in Kabul” but rejected any participation by members of the present Kabul government.

The local and regional Afghan guerrilla commanders have the most loyal followings, and they too could become involved in the struggle for transitional power. The Kabul regime has recently encouraged these commanders to assert themselves, apparently in the belief that additional claimants for a share of power will add to the confusion and increase the government’s chances of controlling events.

With Soviet prodding, the Kabul regime has made several attempts to broaden its base, even to include resistance leaders, but none has succeeded.

At one point last year, Cordovez reportedly tried to promote an intra-Afghan dialogue in the hope that it might lead to an interim coalition. But with a settlement within reach after 5 1/2 years of negotiations, Cordovez appears reluctant to delay further.

“I don’t see any progress at all on this issue,” a diplomatic source said. “At present, there’s no internal dialogue at all.”