WASHINGTON — President Bush on Thursday rejected the renewed Soviet call for a halt in outside arms shipments to Afghanistan and called on the Soviet Union to support "an independent, nonaligned" government in Kabul.
In a brief Oval Office interview with reporters, the President made it plain that the United States has no intention of cutting off arms or supplies to the Afghan rebels. He suggested that a continuing flow of U.S. arms is needed to counter the equipment that the Soviet Union left in the hands of the Najibullah regime.
"It would not be fair to have (a) tremendous amount of lethal supplies left behind and then cut off support for (the) resistance, and thus leaving an unacceptable imbalance," said Bush in his first public remarks on the subject since the completion of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan on Wednesday.
Urged to Support Embargo
After the last Soviet forces left Afghanistan, Moscow issued a statement urging the United States to support both an embargo on arms shipments into the country and a cease-fire between the Afghan rebels and Afghan government troops.
Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had made a similar proposal at the United Nations last December. The Reagan Administration turned down this offer and continued to support the military efforts of the Afghan \o7 moujahedeen \f7 resistance groups.
Bush and his National Security Council conducted their own review of U.S. policy on Afghanistan last week. Afterward, Administration officials said that they had decided to continue supplying the rebels and to press for the replacement of the Najibullah regime in Kabul as soon as possible after the Soviet withdrawal.
A State Department official said last week that the United States believes Najibullah and his government probably will not last more than six months.
Cool to Arms Halt
Asked Thursday whether the United States intends to continue to aid the rebels, Bush replied: "We will do what we need to do to see that there is a peaceful resolution to this question, that one side does not dominate militarily. . . . "
State Department spokesman Charles Redman reacted with similar coolness to the Soviet offer for a halt in arms shipments.
"The Soviets, in leaving, have left absolutely massive stockpiles of equipment for an illegitimate regime that has existed only because of Soviet support, and now continues to exist because of that stockpiled support," Redman said.
