Soviets rebuff EC on plan for an Afghan conference

The Soviet Union told the British foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, that a Common Market proposal for an international conference on Afghanistan were not a realistic way of solving the problem, British sources said.

But Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, while criticizing the EC plan, did not reject it outright during an opening session of talks devoted to Afghanistan. He gave no explicit promise to consider the proposal, but he and Lord Carrington agreed to stay in touch and to meet in September at the UN General Assembly in New York.