Will Continue Aiding Afghan Rebels, U.S. Affirms

As the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan on Wednesday, the United States said it will continue to support the Afghan rebels as they try to oust the Moscow-backed government in Kabul.

“Our support for the resistance continues,” said State Department spokesman Charles Redman. “Our goals really haven’t changed. Our goals have been to support Afghan self-determination, and that will continue to be our goal.”

“This is a long-awaited day for the Afghan people, and they can now go on to determine their own future,” Redman added. He said the United States supports efforts to create a broadly based Afghan government but has proposed no blueprint. “It is going to have to be a solution found by the Afghan people,” he said.

Hours after the last soldier crossed into the Soviet Union, Moscow appealed for an immediate cease-fire and an end to arms shipments by all countries. But there was no indication the United States would abide by such an appeal. Washington has said it would continue sending arms to the guerrillas as long as Moscow sends arms to the Kabul regime.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III said in Madrid during his tour of North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries that “the past 10 years of Soviet aggression in Afghanistan are a tragic chapter in that nation’s history. I think that it would be appropriate now for us to call on the Soviets to assist in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.”

Former President Jimmy Carter, whose Administration protested the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by keeping U.S. athletes out of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow and imposed an embargo on grain sales, said the Soviet occupation was wrong from the beginning.

“The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December, 1979, was an international tragedy,” Carter said in a prepared statement in Atlanta. “The heroism of the Afghan men and women who fought against foreign subjugation has forced Soviet forces to withdraw in defeat.

“I am proud of the support the United States gave from the earliest day to those who offered their lives for freedom,” Carter said.