The Michigan Doily-Thursday, June 19, 1980-Page 5
STATE REPUBLICANS WIN BATTLE
House to vote on tax
LANSING (UPI)-House
Republicans yesterday won their battle
for more rural tax relief at city
dwellers' expense as the House
Taxation Committee voted to send an
$800 million tax shift proposal to the full
chamber.
The plan is intended to compete with
the 50 per cent tax-cutting plan
heralded by Shiawassee County Drain
Factional st
Afglhunistar
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP)-Dis-
membered bodies of five supporters of
President Babrak Karmal of
Afghanistan were discovered at a
housing project in Kabul, a resident of
the Afghan capital said yesterday.
The account appeared to corroborate
Western and non-aligned diplomatic
reports of intensified friction between
factions of the ruling Khalq (People's)
Party.
KARMAL WAS installed in Decem-
ber after Soviet troops helped over-
throw his predecessor, Hafizullah
Amin, who was executed.
Unconfirmed reports said Karmal
made an unsuccessful attempt to com-
mit suicide and his air force comman-
der had been shot and wounded within
the past few days.
Factional strife within Karmal's par-
ty dates back to the April 1978 coup that
brought in the first of three successive
Marxist regimes.
A KABUL RESIDENT, a university
student who declined to be named said
the bodies of five Karmal supporters
were discovered early this month at the
Soviet built housing project where par-
ty members have been allocated apar-
tments.
Reports from Western diplomats this
week said Afghan informants told of an
average of 10 assassinations a day of
low-level party members, many ap-
parently victims of the in-fighting.
The factions supporting and opposing
Karmal have splintered further since
the Soviet intervention. A number of
career army officers, personally
recruited into the party by Amin, were
believed still united in their opposition
to Karmal, seen by some staunch
Marxists as a puppet of Moscow,
Afghan sources said.
RADIO KABUL SAID Maj. Gen. Ab-
dul Qader, who had a major role in the
April 1979 coup, left the Afghan capital
yesterday for medical treatment in the
Soviet Union. The broadcast, heard in
India, did not mention the nature of
Qader's ailment.
Nor did it mention a report carried
by a traveler from Afghanistan to New
Delhi that Qader, the former air force
commander, was wounded Monday in
the compound of the Afghanistan
Foreign Ministry in Kabul. The
traveler, who refused to be identified,
said the assailant was a member of a
group opposing Karmal's faction within
the ruling party.
Renorts from Kabul said Qader has
Commissioner Robert Tisch.
THE PANEL approved the Senate-
passed plan on a 12-3-1 vote during a
tension-filled three-hour meeting in-
terrupted for last minute negotiations
between state Budget Director Gerald
Miller and GOP lawmakers.
Republican panelists, who had
threatened to oppose the proposal en
masse, won their fight to have the
ri e in
Sintensifs
amount of property tax relief in the
plan hiked to aid farmers and outstate
residents-a move which subsequently
will hurt urban taxpayers.
The plan, which was drawn up by
legislative leaders and aides to Gov.
William Milliken, is now set for House
action next week.
UNDER THE PLAN adopted by the
committee, homeowners' property tax
assessments would be cut by $7,100. The
original measure cut assessments by
$6,500ooThenew cut equalsabout $370 itl
tax relief as opposed to the earlier $350.
To make up the lost revenue, the
state's 4 per cent sales tax would be
raised to 5.5 per cent.
The compromise uses a complicated
method in which homeowners will
receive credits only on millage levied
for city operating costs-not those used
to pay off debts, such as bond issues.
shift
WHILE RURAL communities are
generally free of such deficits, tax-
payers in cities such as Detroit may
pay up to 25 per cent of their bills for
debt retirement.
However, all three, Detroit
Democrats supported the plan.
Committee debate took place under
the watchful eyes of Miller and House
Speaker Bobby Crim. The panel last
week rejected the plan after amen-
dments were added which the governor
and Crim did not support.
The panel threw out those amen-
dments, including one which would
have based farm assessments on pred-
sent use instead of potential production.
Republican Donald Van Singel of
Grant, who originally opposed the plan,
said he and other GOP lawmakers
would support the compromise.
been mentioned as a possible successor
to Karmal in rumors circulating about
possible leadership changes or a new
coup.
The unconfirmed report of the
shooting of Qader reached New Delhi
about the time as one saying Karmal
had tried last Friday to kill himself but
was stopped by his security guards. In-
dian news agencies quoted Radio
Pakistan as carrying that report.
There could be no independent con-
firmation and diplomatic sources in
New Delhi said they had heard nothing
about such a suicide attempt from their
embassies in Kabul.
The East Germany news agency
ADN on Sunday quoted Karmal as
saying in a speech to provincial leaders
that they should. support the gover-
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