U.S. plans ‘strong’ action in Afghan crisis

Press, 4 January 1980, Page 5

U.S. plans ‘strong’ action in Afghan crisis

NZPA-Reuter Washington President Carter is expected to disclose today the scope of measures retaliating against ' the Soviet Union for its military intervention in Afghanistan. , Officials said he had ruled out a military response but had directed strong action to meet what he called a ■grave threat to peace. In a significant change of attitude, State Department and Pentagon officials said the United States was considering for the first time accepting offers of military bases in Israel and Egypt. The United States had previously brushed aside all suggestions that it should deploy forces in the Middle East.

I. The President, whose first response to the Afghan crisis was to speed up military aid to Pakistan, on Wednesday recalled the United States Ambassador to Moscow (Mr Thomas Wat--,son). The envoy, due in Washington today, was brought back officially for consultations. But officials said the decision was taken chiefly to signal the President’s anger and his condemnation of Soviet actions in Afghanistan.

The White House said the President had taken a number of other decisions, described by officials as tough, and planned to announce at Last some today, after consultations with other countries. Officials said choices before Mr Carter at a National Security Council meeting yesterday included a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, a demand ■ by the United Nations General Assembly for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, interruption of commercial credits and other economic reprisals. An Agriculture Department official told Reuters that the impact of a grain embargo on the Soviet Union was being studied, but added that this did not mean that President Carter had decided to halt shipments to the Russians. The Russians are depending on record imports of American grain to offset their poor crops. The White House reaffirmed Mr Carter’s continued support for the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (S.A.L.T. II) with the Soviet Union despite the retaliatory measures he ordered into effect. But officials said the tim-

ing of the ratification debate by the United States Senate had been delayed by the crises in Iran and in Afghanistan, and the White House was consulting Senate leaders about the situation. Officials at the Pentagon and State department said the Soviet drive into Afghanistan had added new urgency to the American decision to bolster its naval forces in the Indian OceanGulf region. One result, an official said, would be the creation of a new fleet in the Middle East, although the new naval force would not be called.a fleet as such. The ■ damage done to American-Soviet relations by Moscow’s intervention in Afghanistan is considered by Government officials in Washington to be much greater than earlier strains that led to premature predictions of an end to detente. Repercussions of the Soviet action on a whole range of United States-Soviet ties were described by one State Department official as “at a different level from anything in recent times in terms of the seriousness of what they have done.” In Paris, President Valery Giscard d’Estaing has offer-

ed his chief political rival the opportunity of taking part in consultations on the Afghan crisis. The President invited the Socialist leader. Francois Mitterand, to confer with the Foreign Minister (Mr Jean Francois-Poncet) and gain access to documents and other elements in the Government’s possession. In Vienna, diplomats said East European countries appeared divided in their reaction. Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia, like East Germany, supported and justified the Soviet action. But the Hungarian and Polish press confined their coverage to brief, factual news reports in an apparent indication of embarrassment over Moscow’s move. Rumania, whose President Nicolae Ceausescu last week-end pointedly reiterated his stand that “nations should not intervene in the internal qffairs of other countries,” has hardly mentioned the event in Afghanistan. Angry 7 Afghan students occupied ' their country’s embassies in New Delhi and Bonn for several hours on Wednesday to protest against the ■ Soviet intervention. The police evicted the students peacefully.