Soviet Aid Called Only Unsolved Afghan Issue

The United States, Pakistan and the Soviet Union have agreed to paper over differences about the makeup of an interim government for Afghanistan, leaving an increasingly bitter dispute over Moscow’s military aid to the present regime in Kabul as the only unsolved issue blocking an early withdrawal of Soviet troops, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.

The United States does not plan to propose any other way of breaking the impasse after Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze rejected a U.S. plan calling for a moratorium on military aid to all factions in Afghanistan’s protracted civil war, the official said.

This development grew out of this week’s talks involving Shevardnadze and Secretary of State George P. Shultz, which were described in detail Thursday by three ranking Administration officials. Other than fixing a date for the fourth meeting of President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the talks failed to pave the way for any new agreements on issues ranging from arms control to regional conflicts.

Space Defense Proposal

On arms control issues, the United States proposed a separate treaty on space defenses that would specifically permit tests and experiments in orbit acceptable to both sides, one of the three officials said. If Moscow accepts that plan, which seems unlikely, it would help to answer congressional complaints that the Administration is violating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty by pressing ahead with its “Star Wars” program.

On nuclear test ban issues, the Soviets backtracked by insisting that time-consuming joint experiments be conducted in both countries before Moscow will agree to new verification measures, apparently dashing hopes that an agreement could be signed when Reagan visits Moscow May 29 to June 2. This development, one U.S. official complained, represents a shift in the Kremlin from a “super-fast track” to a slow pace for no apparent reason.

One official said that Shevardnadze and his aides offered assurances that Moscow would remove its estimated 115,000 troops from Afghanistan even if no agreement is ever reached in the talks being mediated by the United Nations in Geneva. But he said the Soviets implied that their departure would be less advantageous to the West if the Geneva talks break down.

“They’ll do it in a different way,” the official said. “I presume the differences will relate to how quickly it occurs, what steps they take vis-a-vis other parties, when the withdrawal commences and how it proceeds.

“From our standpoint, if we can get an agreement . . . it’s desirable from the standpoint of assuring the most timely Soviet withdrawal.”

The official said the only significant unresolved issue in the Geneva talks concerns military aid to the various Afghan factions. Washington is prepared to stop sending arms to the anti-Communist moujahedeen rebels provided Moscow stops aiding the Afghan army.

The Soviets reject this position because, they say, the Soviet Union has treaty obligations to support the Kabul regime. The United States insists that President Najibullah’s government is illegitimate and that therefore it has no greater standing than the moujahedeen.

In an effort to finesse the issue, Shultz suggested a moratorium on arms shipments to both sides, to be in effect during the Soviet troop withdrawal plus the next three months. Shevardnadze rejected the plan.

The official said that disputes over the makeup of an interim government, once thought to be the most serious obstacle to a settlement, have been all but resolved. All parties have agreed that Diego Cordovez, the U.N. undersecretary general who has been mediating the Geneva talks, will attempt to reconcile differences among the Afghan parties. This formula effectively postpones the battle over the interim government until after the Geneva accords are signed.

Acceptable to Pakistan

The U.S. official said the Cordovez compromise is acceptable to Pakistan, which had been insisting that the composition of the interim government be determined before the Geneva talks are concluded.

The compromise requires Cordovez to act as a private individual rather than as a U.N. official, because the United Nations is not permitted to involve itself in the internal affairs of member countries.

In a way, the formula is a fitting one for the Geneva talks, which were based at the outset on assumptions that are fictional but which the parties tacitly agreed not to challenge. In reality, the negotiations are, at one level, between the United States and the Soviet Union and, at another level, between the Kabul government and the moujahedeen. But neither superpower would participate officially, and Kabul would not talk to the guerrillas. So the talks ostensibly are between the Kabul government and Pakistan, the often-uneasy host to guerrilla organizations and to thousands of Afghan refugees.

On the subject of arms control, the Soviets, in an apparent concession, agreed to a U.S. call for separate treaties on strategic arms reductions and on space defenses.

The Soviets previously had demanded a protocol to be inserted into any strategic arms agreement to emphasize the connection with space defenses. The United States, for its part, wanted a separate treaty to make it more difficult for the Soviets to hold offensive arms cuts hostage to space defense. The Soviets now have agreed to this approach.

Still, the two sides are so far apart in the strategic arms negotiations that the question of separating the issues may be largely academic.

The space treaty would build on the ABM treaty, which forbids deployment of anti-missile systems except for a token force of 100 interceptor rockets on each side. Earlier the two sides had agreed in principle not to withdraw from the ABM pact for a period of years--the Americans suggesting seven and the Soviets proposing 10. But differences emerged on the scope of work--research, development and testing--that would be permitted in this non-withdrawal period.

3 Elements in U.S. Proposal

In this week’s talks, the United States proposed three elements for a new treaty:

-- Each side should be allowed to launch and test sensor devices in space without restraint. When the ABM treaty was signed, early warning radars were permitted to be built only on the periphery of each country and aimed outward. Since then, both sides have deployed early warning radars in space, with heat (infrared) and light detectors.

-- The treaty should define the difference between testing and deployment. This would be easy, ostensibly, with weapons undergoing considerable testing before they are deployed in large numbers. But as one official noted, an argument could be made that a single weapon in space for testing purposes could also be construed as deployment of that weapon.

-- The treaty should specify exchanges of scientists, advance notification of tests, and data from those tests on space defenses. Such a “predictability package” has been put before Soviet negotiators in Geneva in the last two weeks.

Some officials are skeptical that the Soviets will agree to proposals that would, in effect, legitimize U.S. “Star Wars” efforts. However, Shevardnadze did not reject them out of hand.

On the nuclear testing issue, the Soviets are insisting that joint experiments, involving the explosion of nuclear devices at each other’s testing grounds, must be completed before they will agree to new verification procedures to police underground test bans.

The United States wants the experiments but does not believe they can be conducted and their data interpreted in time for the new verification rules to be ready for signing in Moscow by Reagan and Gorbachev.