Soviet offer to send home regiments seen as gesture

Press, 30 July 1986, Page 10

Soviet offer to send home regiments seen as gesture

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Kremlin leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has promised that the Soviet Union will withdraw some 7000 soldiers from Afghanistan by year-end, but Moscow-based analysts doubt that the withdrawal amounts to more than a diplomatic gesture. In a speech on AsianPacific security given in the Soviet Far Eastern port of Vladivostok yesterday, Mr Gorbachev said three anti-aircraft regiments, two motor rifle regiments, and one armoured regiment would return to base in the Soviet Union.

Soviet troops could leave Afghanistan quickly as soon as the war be-

tween the Soviet-backed Afghan Army and Muslim rebels had been settled politically, he said. Diplomats said the speech was clearly timed to coincide with the reconvening in Geneva this week of United Nationssponsored indirect talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan to end the conflict.

Most saw it as an olive branch to Washington, which wants regional conflicts to be discussed if a new super-Power summit meeting is held this year, and to China, which has cited Afghanistan as one of three obstacles to better relations with Moscow.

Some diplomats interpreted the move more cynically as a means of

putting.pressure on Pakistan before the Geneva talks.

But all agreed that it was likely to be little more than a gesture. American officials dismissed it as such yesterday.

Since intervening in Afghanistan in December, 1979, Moscow has built up an estimated force there of at least 115,000 men. Helicopter gunships have spearheaded the fight against the moun-tain-based rebels but no air forces are among those to be withdrawn.

"My first reaction to this was to think of the situation in Kampuchea,” said one Western diplomat specialising in Afghan affairs. “There, the Viet-

namese troop withdrawals have proved to be no more than troop rota-, tions,” he said. “It remains to be seen > what this really means but I would be very surprised if Moscow had taken a unilateral decision adversely affecting its troops on the ground,” he said. Moscow and Kabul have recently claimed two big victories over the rebels. It seems that the new Afghan leader, Dr Najibullah, Is combining fresh, limited proposals for a political settlement with stepped-up military drive.

As well as announcing the troop pull-out from Afghanistan, Mr Gorbachev said the Soviet

Union was discussing with Mongolia the possibility of withdrawing some of its 25,000 soldiers from the land-locked country on the border with China, which has been Moscow’s close ally since 1921. Diplomats said this was another gesture clearly aimed at Peking, which Moscow has been wooing for some time, most recently by suggesting a Sino-Soviet summit meeting. Peking cites Moscow’s intervention in Afghanistan, its troop levels on the Chinese border, and support of Vietnam’s role in Kampuchea as the main blocks to detente between the world’s biggest but still largely estranged Communist Powers.