Kabul Calls for Truce on Jan. 1 : Afghan Rebels Spurn Offer, Vow to Fight On

Troops of the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan will cease firing on U.S.-backed Muslim guerrillas next week and will refrain from attacks as long as the insurgents do, Afghan President Najibullah said Friday.

But a guerrilla spokesman in Islamabad said the insurgents will keep fighting in the 10-year-old war, making the truce meaningless.

“All sections and divisions of the republic’s military forces have been given an order to observe a cease-fire from Jan. 1 in conditions in which the opposite side will refrain from direct attack,” the official Soviet news agency Tass quoted Najibullah as saying on Afghan television.

Afghan government radio said Muslim insurgents will be given four days to accept the truce. If they refuse, government troops will start shooting again, said Radio Kabul, monitored in Islamabad.

Dismissed by Guerrillas

The truce was dismissed by Masood Khalili, a spokesman for the Jamaat-i-Islami guerrilla group. Its leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani, recently met with Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Yuli M. Vorontsov in Saudi Arabia.

“We did not start our fight because he asked us to, and we won’t stop because he asked us to,” Khalili said. “He won’t have any cease-fire because moujahedeen (guerrillas) won’t stop fighting.”

Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in December, 1979, to help the Marxist government fight the guerrillas.

Last April, Moscow signed a U.N.-brokered accord providing for the withdrawal by Feb. 15, 1989, of all Soviet troops, estimated by Western analysts at about 115,000. Half had left by Aug. 15 under the agreement.

Soviet officials say the withdrawal has been suspended because of continuing U.S. and Pakistani aid to the guerrillas.

Gorbachev Proposed Truce

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in a speech to the United Nations on Dec. 7, proposed that a cease-fire begin in Afghanistan on Jan. 1 and that all military supplies be cut off.

The seven-party Afghan guerrilla alliance headquartered in Pakistan rejected the cease-fire.

Najibullah also declared a cease-fire that began Jan. 15, 1988, but the insurgents ignored it and the fighting continued.

Khalili said the fighting will not stop until Najibullah and his ruling Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan leave Kabul. He said Moscow has escalated the fighting inside Afghanistan within the last two weeks.

There also were indications that the guerrillas plan to step up their offensive.