ISLAMABAD : Looking for Soviet POWs

A Soviet delegation arrives in the Pakistani capital Thursday for three days of talks with leaders of Afghanistan’s Islamic moujahedeen resistance. It will be Moscow’s latest effort to gain freedom for dozens--possibly hundreds--of Soviet prisoners still missing from the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

A handful of prisoners seized by the U.S.-backed rebels have been freed since the Soviet army withdrew the last of its 110,000 troops from Kabul in February, 1990. But this week’s scheduled talks represent the first organized attempt to win a mass release of POWs.

Few Afghan experts in Islamabad, however, are optimistic about the meeting.