Shevardnadze Hedges on Afghan Withdrawal

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, meeting Secretary of State George P. Shultz in a new round of pre-summit talks, edged back Tuesday from a suggestion floated by his own spokesman last week that the Soviet Union might withdraw its forces from Afghanistan even if current talks collapse.

Asked by reporters about the possibility of a unilateral Soviet withdrawal, Shevardnadze said that “it is better to have the document signed in Geneva,” where the U.N.-sponsored talks are taking place. “This is the better possibility,” he said as the meeting began.

State Department spokesman Charles Redman said Shultz and Shevardnadze discussed Afghanistan on Monday night and will return to the subject today. He said they concentrated on arms control and human rights Tuesday.

The purpose of the meeting, the fourth between the two men in six months, is to narrow differences before the next summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, planned for Moscow in late May.

Earlier Tuesday, the two foreign ministers used a pair of scissors with gold-colored handles to cut a blue ribbon opening a new superpower crisis reduction center. The center is designed to speed the exchange of information between the two countries on such subjects as arms control verification and weapons tests.

No breakthroughs in the talks were reported by spokesmen for either side. This round will end late today with news conferences by both men, who plan to meet again next month in Moscow.

Shevardnadze said Moscow hopes that the United States will join in supporting a U.N.-backed plan for an orderly withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. His remarks seemed to undercut comments made last Thursday in Moscow by Vadim Perfilyev, deputy spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, who said that if the negotiations break down, the Soviet Union will pull out its forces on conditions acceptable only to itself and the government in Kabul.

Perfilyev, who was in Washington as a spokesman for Shevardnadze, said the foreign minister did not want to talk about the possibility of unilateral Soviet action because he still hopes to persuade the United States to go along with a procedure acceptable to both nations. But he implied that, as the ultimate fallback position, the Soviet Union would act on its own if there was no broader agreement.

The U.N. talks, tantalizingly close to agreement earlier this year, have bogged down. The negotiations ostensibly involve the Afghan government and Pakistan, the sometimes uneasy host to anti-Communist Afghan rebels and to thousands of refugees fleeing the Marxist regime in Kabul. The Soviet and U.S. “observer” teams, however, hold much of the real power at the talks.

Moscow is resisting a U.S. demand that it end military aid to the Afghan army at the same time that Washington terminates its support for the moujahedeen rebels.

Redman, quoting Shultz, said: “As always, the meetings were businesslike, straightforward and constructive.

‘A Few Laughs’

“The secretary noted there had been a few laughs here and there and a few arguments here and there,” Redman added, although he refused to elaborate.

Perfilyev said Shevardnadze was the first to raise the issue of human rights. After years in which Moscow objected to all U.S. complaints about Soviet human rights abuses as a violation of its sovereignty, Perfilyev said the Soviets now consider the matter to be “a two-way street.”

He said Shevardnadze “asked for an explanation” about homelessness in the United States and “other social issues.”

“We are changing a lot of things in our country in the field of glasnost (Gorbachev’s openness campaign) and legal procedures,” Perfilyev said. “But it is not a reform on your (American) demand.”

For their meetings Tuesday, Shultz and Shevardnadze were accompanied by two close aides on each side--Assistant Secretary of State Rozanne L. Ridgway and National Security Adviser Colin L. Powell for the Americans and arms adviser Viktor P. Karpov and Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh for the Soviet Union. Lower-ranking officials discussed regional conflicts, arms control, human rights and other subjects. About 30 officials were involved on each side.

High-Tech Link

Earlier, they presided over the opening of the U.S. terminal of a new high-tech communications link between Washington and Moscow. The Nuclear Risk Reduction Center is located on the seventh floor of the State Department building, next to the department’s Operations Center.

The windowless 12-by-18-foot room holds four computer terminals, four facsimile machines and other facilities for data transmission and is manned around the clock by a communications specialist and a Russian-speaking watch officer. There is a similar room in the Soviet capital. U.S. messages are sent in English and the Soviets reply in Russian.

The centers supplement, but do not supersede, the Washington-Moscow hot line. Their purpose is to speed the exchange of information between the capitals, especially notifications required under the treaty outlawing nuclear missiles with ranges of 300 to 3,400 miles.