Bhutto Denies Afghan Leader’s Charge of Planned Invasion

Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan on Sunday denied a charge by Afghan President Najibullah that her government plans to invade Afghanistan and try to annex that country.

“We’ve got enough problems of national integration,” the visiting prime minister said at a Beijing press conference. “We don’t need foreign adventures. . . . There are no Pakistani troops being massed on the border with Afghanistan.”

Najibullah, in an apparent bid to rally support to his beleaguered government, charged in a radio and television address Saturday that Pakistan was moving troops to the border in preparation for an invasion. The Soviet Union is due to pull the last of its troops out of Afghanistan by Wednesday.

Najibullah also said that the guerrillas have agreed to Pakistani plans to annex Afghanistan under the guise of a “confederation.”

Bhutto stopped short of flatly ruling out an eventual confederation with Afghanistan, but she said that no one has ever proposed such an idea to her government.

“Let’s see what the Afghan people decide for themselves first before you look at any further questions,” Bhutto said. “Stray ideas . . . may have come up in the past in relation to Afghanistan. I do not know because they have not gathered the weight to be considered by anybody.”

Bhutto called Najibullah’s charges “a bid to divert attention from the real problems.”

She repeated a call for the transfer of power in Afghanistan to a “broad-based” interim government made up of elements from the various rebel factions, but she said there are limits to Pakistan’s role.

“All we can do is exert our influence for a political settlement and hope that the different groups come to an agreement between themselves,” she said.

Premier Li Peng of China expressed similar views in talks with Bhutto on Sunday.

“We are very concerned about the current trend of an internal war in Afghanistan,” Li said, according to the official New China News Agency. “We don’t want to see deterioration of this situation, and hope that a coalition government (will) be established on a broad basis and acceptable to all parties so that peace could return to the country.”

Bhutto said the purpose of her visit her “has been both to symbolize the traditional friendship and to establish a rapport with the present Chinese leadership.”

Bhutto is scheduled to meet with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in Shanghai today before returning home.