Afghanistan Foreign Relations Ussr

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said Monday that Iran is showing a new realism in its attitude toward the Afghan conflict, and he expressed hope that Pakistan will join negotiations for a settlement. He told the Afghan news agency Bakhtar that Iran, which like Pakistan has provided bases for thousands of Muslim rebels, has adopted a "wholly positive attitude" on the problem of Afghanistan.

Former Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, a Kremlin insider for more than four decades, has disclosed that former Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev had a serious drinking problem and ordered the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan after an emotional reaction to the assassination of a Communist leader in Kabul. Gromyko, 80, who advised every Soviet leader since Josef Stalin, made the disclosures in an interview published Sunday in the London Observer.

The "last" Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan was actually out of the country by Feb. 14 but went back in just to make his dramatic walk across the bridge. "Actually, I slept here last night," Lt. Gen. Boris Gromov, commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, told a reporter Wednesday at his Termez hotel. "I went back over the other side this morning for the final pullout." Gromov also found that the room he had occupied Tuesday night at the Torkhan hotel had gone to someone else.

A U.N.

With its troops out of Afghanistan, the Soviet government Wednesday renewed its proposal for an immediate cease-fire there and a halt in arms shipments to both the Kabul government and the rebel moujahedeen . The Soviet statement said that the withdrawal, agreed upon last April by Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Soviet Union and the United States, should provide a good basis for restoring peace to the country. Immediate steps are needed, it said, to ensure that the opportunity is not lost.