Afghan Accord Ready for Signing in Geneva : Pact Includes Pullout of Moscow’s Troops

Almost six years after the negotiations began, a U.N. mediator Friday announced a peace agreement in Afghanistan that includes the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

“I want to inform you that the documents are now finalized and open for signature,” mediator Diego Cordovez told a news conference.

He said the agreement would be signed in less than a week, before next Thursday, by representatives of the Soviet-backed Marxist government in Kabul and the government of Pakistan, where millions of Afghans have taken refuge and where the major Afghan rebel groups are based.

The United States and the Soviet Union are expected to act as guarantors to the agreement. Cordovez indicated that U.S. and Soviet representatives will sign at least one of the five documents that make up the accord.

In addition to the withdrawal of Soviet military forces, the settlement provides for:

-- The orderly return of the world’s largest refugee population. An estimated 4.5 million people have fled Afghanistan in the eight years since the fighting began and taken refuge in Pakistan and Iran.

-- The establishment of a nonaligned, independent Afghanistan.

-- A pledge of mutual noninterference by Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Cordovez also disclosed the existence of a fifth document, a memorandum of understanding that outlines arrangements for the United Nations to monitor the settlement. He declined to discuss the documents’ contents in detail until after they have been signed.

Friday’s announcement confirmed the settlement under which Moscow will begin withdrawing its troops by May 15, a process the Soviets have said they will complete within nine months.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the head of the Afghan government, Najibullah, pledged in a statement Thursday to begin the withdrawal May 15 if there was agreement in Geneva “within the shortest period of time.” And Radio Moscow quoted Gorbachev on Friday as saying that Soviet troops will indeed start heading home on that date.

Ill-Advised Soviet Venture

The settlement also appeared to mark the beginning of the end of what is widely regarded as the Soviet Union’s most damaging and ill-advised military adventure.

Soviet troops moved into Afghanistan in December, 1979, in an effort to crush a resistance movement then armed with little more than 19th-Century rifles and to shore up a revolutionary pro-Soviet government. Today, in addition to the impact on national morale of what amounts to a military defeat, the Soviets can count the cost of an estimated 12,000 war dead, an incalculable loss of political good will among nonaligned Third World countries, and a souring of relations with the West.

The accord sets the stage for the first withdrawal of Soviet forces anywhere since the Red Army pulled out of Austria in 1955 under terms of a treaty guaranteeing Austrian neutrality.

At Friday’s news conference, Cordovez spoke of the agreement’s potentially broader ramifications as a model for settling other regional conflicts and easing East-West tension.

‘Improve the Atmosphere’

“It will improve the atmosphere of world affairs in general,” he said. “That is something the world needs.”

Although the potential significance of the agreement is widely acknowledged as considerable, much of its impact will depend on its ability to bring real peace to Afghanistan--and there is doubt that it can do this.

The principal uncertainty in the settlement stems from the deep divisions in the Afghan resistance, which was not directly represented in the Geneva talks. Resistance leaders have frequently vowed to reject any agreement reached here, arguing that the Soviet-backed Kabul government has no right to negotiate on behalf of the Afghan people.

In a formal statement that he said had been authorized by all four parties to the talks, Cordovez conceded that in order to succeed, the settlement must have the support of all elements in the tangled Afghan political situation.

“It has been consistently recognized,” he said, “that the objective of a comprehensive settlement implies the broadest support and immediate participation of all segments of the Afghan people and that this can best be assured by a broad-based Afghan government.

“The hope was therefore expressed that all elements of the Afghan nation, living inside and outside Afghanistan, would respond to this historic opportunity,” he added. This was interpreted as a call to the resistance to support the accords.

Rebels Vow to Fight On

But the guerrillas threatened to fight on. In a statement issued Friday at the resistance coalition’s headquarters in Peshawar, Pakistan, they said that “if this government remains in power, the war cannot stop even for a moment.”

The resistance statement said the Geneva agreement “can neither result in a just and lasting solution of the crisis, nor can it result in the voluntary return of the refugees.”

Cordovez defended the agreement against critics who contend that the future of Afghanistan itself has been neglected. In this view, the failure to include the Afghan resistance in the talks and the failure to see an interim Afghan government installed, coupled with a sharp increase in arms shipments by Soviet and Western supplers in anticipation of a settlement, make it virtually certain that the fighting will continue.

With the Kabul regime reluctant to surrender power, and with Islamic fundamentalists in the resistance refusing to work with a regime it sees as consisting of treacherous infidels, many worry that the Soviet departure will merely bring on a different kind of war.

Power Scramble Feared

There is also concern that a scramble for power could lead to fighting among the guerrillas, who have skirmished among themselves in the past.

“It is not a perfect agreement, because it was worked out by human beings,” Cordovez conceded. “The test of the agreement will come with its implementation. I therefore hope that people will give it a chance.”

He concluded: “The agreement is designed to bring peace to Afghanistan, and the conditions for such a peace would not be attained if actions are taken which would fuel hostilities. The Afghans are tired of hostilities. They don’t want more suffering.”

His comments were interpreted as a plea to the superpowers to curtail their military aid and to the guerrillas to accept the peace formula. In his only reference to the agreement’s substance, Cordovez indicated that the ticklish question of “symmetry” on the ending of Soviet and Western military aid may have been skirted altogether.

Moscow has maintained that it provides military supplies to the Kabul regime under a bilateral treaty of long standing, and that this is a question beyond the scope of the Geneva talks. The United States at first accepted this and agreed to cut off aid to the resistance once the Soviet withdrawal began, but it later insisted that aid to both sides be ended simultaneously. Differences on this issue constituted one of the final stumbling blocks to agreement.

No ‘Symmetry’ in Documents

Cordovez, responding to a question on symmetry, said that “there is no such reference in any document.” Western diplomatic sources here said the issue had been resolved informally, and that the Soviets had tacitly accepted a U.S. statement of intent.

According to one diplomat, who declined to be identified by name, the United States had given an assurance that it planned no military aid to the guerrillas during the nine months of the Soviet withdrawal. But he said Washington made clear that it would resume military assistance if Moscow should provide such aid to the Kabul regime.

The diplomat said that there was no formal agreement as such but that the Soviets had been informed of the U.S. position and, without responding directly, had decided to accept the settlement.

In Washington and in California, where President Reagan is vacationing, U.S. officials welcomed the accord but indicated that they were waiting for notification that the Soviets had accepted the American stand on the arms supply question.

It was still not clear late Friday who would sign the agreement for the Soviet Union and the United States.