Soviets Say Way Open to Afghan Pact : See May 15 Start of Troop Pullout With Geneva Settlement

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Afghan President Najibullah announced Thursday that they have cleared away the “last obstacles” to a peace agreement on Afghanistan, allowing the Soviets to start withdrawing their troops there next month.

If an accord is signed soon in Geneva, where peace talks have stalled on the question of U.S. and Soviet arms supplies to Afghanistan, then Moscow on May 15 will begin withdrawing its estimated 115,000 troops, the two leaders said in a statement issued in the Soviet Central Asian city of Tashkent.

The Soviets have been pressing to begin the withdrawal in advance of the summit meeting between Gorbachev and President Reagan in Moscow beginning May 29.

Gorbachev ‘Certain’ of Pact

Tass, the Soviet news agency, quoted Gorbachev as saying: “There is certain to be a signed agreement on political normalization. I think both Pakistan and Afghanistan will come to agreement and that we and the Americans will agree to be guarantors.”

Pakistan is involved in the talks because about 3 million Afghans have fled the fighting and taken refuge in the neighboring country.

In Geneva, official sources indicated that formal announcement of a settlement could come as early as today.

“I think the situation will be clear,” said a United Nations official who asked not to be identified. “There’s a certain amount of technical work that has to be done, texts that have to be checked. . . . Each minister has to sign 50 times.”

He said the delegations are still consulting and that “all the parties are being very careful.”

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley said the United States “noted with great interest the Tass statement. . . . We, too, hope that rapid progress can be made in concluding the Geneva accords.”

‘Symmetry’ on Military Aid

The United States told the Soviets last month that it would not guarantee the peace agreement unless Moscow would accept the principle of “symmetry” in connection with military aid to the rival factions in Afghanistan--Najibullah’s Soviet-backed government, on the one hand, and the U.S.-backed rebels on the other.

Oakley said the United States has not yet received a formal response from the Soviet Union to the American proposals for an agreement. Until the Soviet reply is received, she said, “We must reserve judgment.”

A spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Gennady I. Gerasimov, said the dispute over military aid was one of the obstacles that has been overcome, but neither he nor the statement issued in Tashkent spelled out how the stalemate had been resolved.

Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq said Thursday in a speech to Parliament in Islamabad that both the United States and the Soviet Union had decided to continue supplying arms to the respective sides.

Zia, who conferred Wednesday with Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci and Assistant Secretary of State Michael H. Armacost, said that now he could sign a peace accord with no reluctance.

A senior member of the Pakistani delegation to the Geneva talks said, “We’re awaiting a call to go to the Palais des Nations (site of the talks).” Because Pakistan has refused to recognize the Kabul government, a regime it views as a Soviet puppet, the negotiations have been conducted indirectly, rather than face to face.

Meanwhile, guerrillas representing the seven groups that make up the Afghan resistance based in Pakistan said they could not accept the peace agreement and that they will continue to fight.

Diplomats in Moscow said it was significant that the Tashkent statement quoted Najibullah as welcoming the readiness of the Soviet Union and the United States to act as guarantors of the Geneva agreement. They said this strongly indicates that both sides expect the accord to be signed.

Half to Go Within 3 Months

The Soviet Union has said that if the peace accords were signed it would withdraw half its troops within three months beginning May 15 and complete the pullout within nine months.

Nikolai Kozyrev, a Soviet ambassador taking part in the Geneva talks, echoed Gorbachev’s optimistic statement. After meeting with U.N. mediator Diego Cordovez, who has been presiding over the talks, Kozyrev told reporters, “I think soon you will have good news.”

Earlier in the day, Cordovez sought to dampen speculation that a settlement had been reached.

“It is a difficult time,” he said. “There are very difficult decisions. The only good thing that is important is that the political will is obviously there.”

The end of the Afghan conflict has been a major policy goal for Gorbachev, who announced on Feb. 8 his desire to withdraw Soviet troops. The Soviets, under Leonid I. Brezhnev, moved into Afghanistan in December, 1979, in order to prop up a faltering Marxist regime there. The occupation proved to be a drain on Soviet resources and morale, however, and Gorbachev has described it as a “festering wound.”

4.5 Million Refugees

The war has created an estimated 4.5 million Afghan refugees, including 1.5 million in Iran in addition to the 3 million in border areas of Pakistan.

The Tashkent statement said that the policy of national reconciliation set out in the agreement makes it possible to establish a coalition government that will include parties now opposed to each other.

Gerasimov said that as far as the Soviets are concerned, the sooner a coalition government is formed the better. But he said the Soviets will firmly oppose any attempt to link the formation of a coalition government and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

He said the other major obstacle resolved in Gorbachev’s discussions with Najibullah dealt with a longstanding dispute over Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.

Gerasimov said Gorbachev was visiting Tashkent as part of a program to familiarize himself with the country, and he discounted suggestions that the Soviet leader made the trip especially to meet with Najibullah.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze had been in Kabul since Sunday trying to work out an agreement on a peace settlement when he and Najibullah flew unexpectedly to Tashkent.

3 Provisions Accepted

After years of often tortuous negotiations, agreement has been achieved in Geneva on three of four so-called “instruments” under consideration:

-- A document outlining relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, including a pledge of mutual non-interference in the affairs of the other.

-- A plan for the orderly return of the millions of Afghan refugees.

-- Guarantees to safeguard Afghanistan’s agreed status as a nonaligned, independent country.

Slowly, difficulties surrounding the final, most delicate issue of the talks--the Soviet troop withdrawal--began to fall into place.

The day after the latest round of negotiations resumed March 2, Moscow bowed to U.S. pressure and agreed to reduce the withdrawal period from 10 to nine months.

That left as the main stumbling block the issue of continued military aid as Soviet troops are withdrawn. Moscow said it could keep supplying the Kabul regime under longstanding treaty arrangements, but that U.S. military aid to the guerrillas must end. Washington proposed that both sides stop military assistance, but said that if Moscow continued its military aid, the United States would continue sending arms to the guerrillas.

Faced with this U.S. insistence on “symmetry” as the price of a Geneva agreement, the Soviets said that they might go ahead with a troop withdrawal even without such an accord. The outcome of the Gorbachev-Najibullah meeting in Tashkent, however, indicates that Moscow and Kabul are prepared to accept the U.S. position on arms to obtain a Geneva settlement.

Transitional Regime

Moscow also apparently acceded to Pakistani pressure that Cordovez be permitted to start the search for an interim, transitional government in Kabul that would preside over the return of the refugees and administer free elections for a permanent government.

Although Cordovez has never formally acknowledged this mandate, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, after talks with Shevardnadze in Washington last month, mentioned that the U.N. mediator would become involved.

The Soviets had previously maintained that the interim government was an issue solely for the Afghans to decide--a position that many believed would extend the life of the present Kabul regime and plunge Afghanistan into a multi-sided civil war.

The Soviet concessions are believed to have angered and upset the Afghan regime, and there was some speculation in Geneva of foot-dragging within the Afghan delegation despite the Tashkent statement.

Charles P. Wallace reported from Moscow and Tyler Marshall from Geneva. Times staff writer Jim Mann in Washington also contributed to this story.