Afghan Pullout Halted, Zia Asserts : Moscow Denies Its Troops Are Moving Back Into Kabul

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan â€”  President Zia ul-Haq touched off a verbal exchange with the Kremlin on Saturday when he said that the Soviet Union had decided to halt its military withdrawal from Afghanistan and had brought 10,000 troops back into Kabul, the Afghan capital, to bolster the city.

In Moscow soon afterward, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces, flatly denied the report and described the Pakistani president’s statement as “pure slander.�

Zia, who has viewed the Soviet Union as an enemy of Pakistan since it sent troops into Afghanistan in December, 1979, conceded as he made his assertion at the end of a news conference here that he had no proof of the report beyond what he called “a very reliable source.� He told reporters that it was up to them to confirm it.

“I just feed this to you,� he said.

Withdrawal ‘Is Proceeding’

The official Soviet news agency Tass quoted Akhromeyev as saying, “The withdrawal of Soviet forces from the Republic of Afghanistan is proceeding in full accordance with the accords reached in Geneva.�

Under a U.N.-mediated agreement signed April 14 in Geneva by the Afghan regime of President Najibullah, Pakistan, the Soviet Union and the United States, Moscow pledged to withdraw all of its estimated 115,000 troops from Afghanistan by next February--half of them by Aug. 15.

The Soviet withdrawal began May 15, and a senior U.N. official involved in monitoring the Geneva accords said in Islamabad that he was not aware of any Soviet troop movements back into Kabul.

U.S. Comments

The State Department in Washington took note of Akhromeyev’s denial of Zia’s assertion and added, “We assume his (Akhromeyev’s) statement is authoritative.�

Diplomatic analysts here said that Zia may have made his statement to try to forestall a development that his intelligence agencies had told him is a possibility.

Recently, Tass and Najibullah have expressed grave concern about rockets fired into Kabul by the moujahedeen, the Afghan resistance fighters. In addition, Moscow has indicated that its withdrawal schedule could be affected by what it charges are violations of the Geneva accords by Pakistan, which is continuing to supply arms and ammunition to Afghan resistance groups based in Pakistan.

But in several recent interviews, Western diplomats monitoring the situation in Afghanistan have said that satellite photographs and ground reports from the Afghan resistance indicate that the Soviets are keeping to their original withdrawal schedule.

On another aspect of the Afghan issue, Zia expressed confidence that the eventual completion of the Soviet pullout will not lead to a reduction in American aid to Pakistan, which became the No. 3 recipient of U.S. foreign assistance in the world after the Kremlin’s 1979 move into Afghanistan.

U.S.-Pakistani relations, he said, are “based on the convergence of mutual interests� apart from the Afghan issue, and, if anything, the Soviet withdrawal “will strengthen relations between the United States and Pakistan.�

Skeptical on Accord

Speaking on the prospects for a future settlement of the war in Afghanistan between the moujahedeen and the Najibullah regime, Zia expressed skepticism that recent peace-making efforts by U.N. special envoy Diego Cordovez will prove successful.

“Mr. Cordovez’s plan is too good to be believed,� Zia said. “Mr. Cordovez’s plan is that on a given day, there will be a cease-fire, and on that day, Najibullah’s government will fall. And on that day, 20 wise men will be brought in to Kabul by Mr. Cordovez and put on a throne. . . .

“In the first place, it is difficult to make the Afghans agree to a cease-fire,� Zia declared, saying that the closest thing to the word cease-fire in the principal language of the Afghan resistance is a word translated as “a surrender of arms.�

“If you tell an Afghan to surrender arms,� he added, “the first thing he will do is have a go at you.�

Zia devoted most of his news conference to Pakistan’s coming legislative elections, which local political analysts see as the most important test of the president’s popularity since he seized power in a military coup in 1977.

Saying that “I am not as dirty and as low as some may think,� Zia said he had no idea that his principal political foe, opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, is pregnant and expecting her first child near the date that he fixed for the elections.

“I have not yet adopted the profession of midwifery,� Zia replied when asked about charges that he deliberately timed the elections to coincide with the final days of Bhutto’s pregnancy.

“This is the first I am hearing of this. . . . And anyway, I am not concerned about the personal affairs of the lady,� he said.

Bhutto, 35, and her supporters have accused Zia of picking the Nov. 16 date as a way of hurting the chances of her Pakistan People’s Party.

Zia has said that he timed the election to avoid any conflict with a series of Islamic religious holidays and Pakistan’s “hot and humid� monsoon season.