West's bid on Afghanistan is fluff, Kremlin says

Western calls for the neutralization of Afghanistan are just "political decoration" designed to disguise US-led plans to reopen the cold war, a Soviet newspaper said Sunday. The Communist Party daily Sovietskaya Rossiya said the recent bustle of diplomatic moves in Western Europe over Afghanistan was no more than a political screen.

The paper said that under cover of its "shuttle diplomacy," the West was carrying out long-planned adventures, including an attempt last week to stage a counterrevolutionary coup in Afghanistan.

Neutralization of Afghanistan has been proposed by Britain and backed by the European Common Market as a way of getting the Kremlin to withdraw its troops.