Karmal urges end to ‘aid’

Press, 28 January 1986, Page 26

Karmal urges end to ‘aid’

NZPA-Reuter Kabul

The President of Afghanistan, Babrak Karmal, urged the United States yesterday to stop aiding Muslim guerrillas if it wanted an end to the six-year war with, his Soviet-backed Government.

Mr Karmal told visiting Western reporters that the United States, which last month said it would help guarantee any negotiated settlement to the war, would also have to pressure Pakistan into signing a peace settlement with Kabul.

He said some Soviet military advisers might stay in Afghanistan, even after a settlement was reached in United Nations-sponsored peace talks in Geneva, if outside interference in Afghanistan’s Internal affairs continued.

Mr Karmal, displaying a copy of the United States news magazine, “Time” to reporters, said Washington had spent 1U51.2 billion on arming and aiding the Pakistanbased, anti-communist

guerrillas.

The article he showed said the United States and Pakistan ran a secret arms supply system for the rebels but many of the weapons were sold for ' profit before they reached Afghanistan. Both countries officially deny this. Asked about Washington’s promised guarantee that the flow of arms to the rebels would cease as part of a peace settlement, Mr Karmal said: “Words are not important The practice is important.”

“It should not give (the rebels) up-to-date weapons and arms and should not send its military advisers to Pakistan to use it as a springboardfor aggression,” he said.

He added: “It is the United States that does not want the limited contingent of Soviet troops to return to their country.” He declined to give the number of Soviet troops based in Afghanistan. Western countries say -the Soviet forces, which intervened in December, 1979, now number about 115,000.