Afghan timetable.

Afghan Timetable

IS MIKHAIL GORBACHEV getting desperate? One asks because the timetable for the (still hypothetical) withdrawal of the 115,000 Soviet troops still in Afghanistan just goes down and down. In Geneva last September, the time-span on offer was 16 months. In November, the current puppet in Kabul, "comrade" Najibullah--Ex-chief of the Khad, the local equivalent of the KGB--gave the time-span as 12 months. Now Gorbachev makes it a mere ten.

Mind you, there are conditions. His stated date for starting the process is May 15 (which relates hardly by coincidence with the proposed Moscow Summit), and the main condition he stipulates is that agreement on a "peace" settlement must have been reached at the UN-sponsored talks by next month.

A more important step forward (if it proves so to be) was Gorbachev's offer to start pulling the occupation army out without first insisting on the creation of a government of national reconciliation in Kabul.

Apparently caught slightly by surprise, the State Department made a cautious reference to "fine print." So now, we sit back and see whether the recent journey to Rome of the ubiquitous Mr. Armand Hammer, son of a co-founder of the Communist Party U.S.A., yields results. Why was Mr. Hammer in Rome? Why, to suggest to the ex-king of Afghanistan that he might go home to preside over a coalition of Communists and anti-Communists. Ah, well ...