Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 7, 1990 TAG: 9003071609
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: NEW DELHI, INDIA LENGTH: Medium
As fighting continued in the streets of the Afghan capital of Kabul, Najib told the embattled nation Tuesday night that his Soviet-backed regime remains firmly in power and that loyal troops were scouring the city to capture renegade Defense Minister Shahnawaz Tanai, a battle-hardened army general whom the president identified as the coup leader.
In Moscow, the official news agency Tass confirmed that the coup had been crushed and that Tanai had fled into hiding.
The attempted coup, which left at least a dozen dead within the first hour alone, was the second plot in three months to overthrow Najib, who has stubbornly clung to power for a full year after his Soviet backers withdrew their 110,000 troops from war-ravaged Afghanistan.
Diplomats and other observers in Kabul, reached by telex and telephone before all lines from the capital went dead at 2 p.m. local time, said that the military assault on Najib began just after noon. Three rockets landed near the presidential palace, and fighting between opposing army factions broke out at the Kabul airport.
At 1:45 p.m., Soviet observers in the capital said that an Afghan air force jet bombed Najib's sprawling and heavily fortified palace, located in the heart of the capital.
Soon after, Soviet foreign ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov told reporters in Moscow that a coup attempt apparently was in progress against Najib, who was installed as Afghan president in 1986, two-thirds of the way through the decade of direct Soviet involvement in Afghanistan.
"There is shooting in the streets," Gerasimov volunteered to reporters. "The situation is confused."
Later, Tass reported that a shell had exploded on the roof of its office, which is in the Soviet Embassy compound. Residents were fleeing the city's downtown area and many areas were without power, Tass reported.
In reporting that Tanai was behind the coup, Afghanistan's state-run Radio Kabul quoted the president as asserting that Tanai had the backing of the mujahadeen, the U.S.-backed Islamic rebels who have been fighting a guerrilla war against Afghanistan's communist regime for the past decade.
Afghan experts and senior diplomats, however, doubted that allegation.
Tanai, who has been virtually holed up in his fortified defense ministry headquarters in Kabul since the last failed coup attempt in December, is known to be intensely anti-mujahadeen.
Three months ago, Najib's government charged 124 of Tanai's supporters with plotting the December coup attempt.
by CNB