Will Still Supply Afghan Rebels--Bush

President Bush on Thursday rejected the renewed Soviet call for a halt in outside arms shipments to Afghanistan and called on the Soviet Union to support “an independent, nonaligned” government in Kabul.

In a brief Oval Office interview with reporters, the President made it plain that the United States has no intention of cutting off arms or supplies to the Afghan rebels. He suggested that a continuing flow of U.S. arms is needed to counter the equipment that the Soviet Union left in the hands of the Najibullah regime.

“It would not be fair to have (a) tremendous amount of lethal supplies left behind and then cut off support for (the) resistance, and thus leaving an unacceptable imbalance,” said Bush in his first public remarks on the subject since the completion of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan on Wednesday.

Urged to Support Embargo

After the last Soviet forces left Afghanistan, Moscow issued a statement urging the United States to support both an embargo on arms shipments into the country and a cease-fire between the Afghan rebels and Afghan government troops.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had made a similar proposal at the United Nations last December. The Reagan Administration turned down this offer and continued to support the military efforts of the Afghan moujahedeen resistance groups.

Bush and his National Security Council conducted their own review of U.S. policy on Afghanistan last week. Afterward, Administration officials said that they had decided to continue supplying the rebels and to press for the replacement of the Najibullah regime in Kabul as soon as possible after the Soviet withdrawal.

A State Department official said last week that the United States believes Najibullah and his government probably will not last more than six months.

Cool to Arms Halt

Asked Thursday whether the United States intends to continue to aid the rebels, Bush replied: “We will do what we need to do to see that there is a peaceful resolution to this question, that one side does not dominate militarily. . . . “

State Department spokesman Charles Redman reacted with similar coolness to the Soviet offer for a halt in arms shipments.

“The Soviets, in leaving, have left absolutely massive stockpiles of equipment for an illegitimate regime that has existed only because of Soviet support, and now continues to exist because of that stockpiled support,” Redman said.

He said that the Soviet supplies have included fighter aircraft and helicopters, medium-sized tanks, infantry fighter vehicles and armored personnel carriers, more than 200 howitzers, scores of other artillery vehicles and hundreds of transport vehicles.

Left Tanks and Rockets

“Then in the final days of the withdrawal, they left behind even more military equipment, including tanks, armored personnel carriers and rocket launchers,” Redman said. “So I think that gives you an indication of the situation they have left in Afghanistan.”

The President’s remarks in the Oval Office appeared to be aimed at demonstrating that the United States does not intend to lose interest in Afghanistan now that the Soviet forces have left the country.

“Our commitment, the commitment of the United States to the people there (in Afghanistan) will remain, and it will remain firm--both through our bilateral humanitarian aid program and through the United Nations efforts to help remove the mines and resettle the refugees and . . . help reconstruct the war-torn economy,” Bush said.

“So we would call upon the Soviet Union to refrain from other forms of interference in Afghan affairs. The Soviet Union has nothing to fear from the establishment of an independent, nonaligned Afghanistan.”