The World - News from March 8, 1988

Pakistan resumed U.N.-mediated talks with Afghanistan on an accord to end the 8-year-old Afghan war and urged the Soviet-backed Kabul government to make the next move as the negotiations in Geneva remained deadlocked over the issue of an interim government. Pakistani negotiator Zain Noorani said that having a transitional government--a last-minute demand the Islamabad government inserted into the talks--is “just as important” as signing a treaty in order to prevent bloodshed as an estimated 115,000 Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan. However, Pakistan’s President Zia ul-Haq was quoted in the Gulf News, a United Arab Emirates newspaper, as saying he is certain of signing an Afghan peace accord soon.