Bush Urged by Gorbachev to Seek Truce

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has sent a personal message to President Bush calling for U.S. cooperation in ending the fighting in Afghanistan, a Soviet official said Friday.

The official, First Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, declined to give details of the message but indicated that it urged the United States to halt its military support of Afghan rebels.

In Washington, White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater confirmed that Gorbachev had sent a private message to Bush, but he would not disclose the contents. He said it “relates generally to the pullout of Soviet forces in Afghanistan” and that it “generally repeats their public position.”

In an interview with reporters Thursday, Bush rejected Soviet calls for an immediate halt to the flow of weapons and ammunition to both sides in the fighting in Afghanistan because Moscow had assembled for the Afghan army a “tremendous amount of lethal supplies.”

‘The Stockpiling Issue’

Fitzwater said Gorbachev’s message contained no mention of stockpiled weapons. He said Bush had no formal response prepared for the Soviet leader, but added: “Our concerns remain the same. The stockpiling issue requires that we continue our positive symmetry.

“We’ll continue to supply (the guerrillas) so long as they supply the Kabul government, and if you have stockpiling there, that, in effect, amounts to continuous supply. Our policy is to provide the same.”

But Bessmertnykh, talking with reporters Friday in Moscow, said any country that persists in supplying weapons to the rebels “wants to see bloodshed continue in that country, which has already been bled white.”

He said that “all countries must respond to the emerging possibility to end this prolonged conflict.”

Sees U.S.-Soviet Role

“We believe that the Soviet Union and the United States can play a positive role together with other countries,” he added. “We must help Afghanistan pull itself back together on a just basis and create, without interfering in internal affairs, a political situation that would enable it to have a broad-based government.”

Afghanistan’s future, he said, depends in part “on the United States and Pakistan, which should stop encouraging the forces that favor a military solution.”

Another Soviet official, Deputy Foreign Minister Yuli M. Vorontsov, used even harsher language in criticizing Bush’s decision to continue supplying arms to the Afghan resistance.

Vorontsov, on a visit to New Delhi, said of U.S. policy on Afghanistan: “My personal view is that during the change of administration they lost some contact with reality in Afghanistan. They resumed the conflict.”

In December, Gorbachev proposed to the United Nations that the Soviet Union and the United States cooperate in trying to impose a cease-fire in Afghanistan and in halting all arms shipments to that country.

Bessmertnykh announced Friday that the Soviet government had sent messages to the leaders of France, Britain, West Germany, Italy, Iran, Pakistan and China seeking cooperation in resolving the Afghan conflict.

Appeals to United Nations

Special appeals were also sent to the United Nations, the leadership of the Nonaligned Movement, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Organization of African Unity, the League of Arab States and the European Community, he said.

The countries to which the Soviet Union appealed, he said, “can in our view play a definite role in stabilizing the situation” in Afghanistan.

Under a U.N.-sponsored agreement, Moscow withdrew the last of its troops from Afghanistan on Wednesday, leaving only a small contingent of advisers in Kabul, the capital.

Bessmertnykh said that the withdrawal showed the world that “the Soviet Union’s words square with our deeds” and “demonstrated to the world at large that regional conflicts can be settled politically.”

He indicated that Moscow will continue non-military support for Najibullah, and noted that food had been sent from Moscow to Kabul, which has been blockaded by guerrillas.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang, in Washington, contributed to this story.