Activists Pledge Registration Resistance

WASHINGTON--As a lone protester walked amid the tourists peering through the White House gates, President Carter Wednesday morning officially revived registration for the draft.

Flanked by members of Congress and Defense Department and Selective Service System officials. Carter issued a proclamation requiring 19- and 20-year-old men to begin registering at their local post offices July 21.

No Draft

Calling registration "a precautionary measure designed to make our country strong and maintain peace," Carter emphasized that "the registration act is not a draft. I am not in a favor of a peace-time draft," he added.

While anti-draft groups in Washington and around the country began to gear up for activities during the two-week registration period. Carter repeated his warnings to the Soviet Union, from his January State of the Union address, when he first asked Congress to initiate peacetime registration.

"We are deeply concerned about the unwarranted and vicious invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and occupation by them of this innocent and defenseless country," the president told the assembled dignitaries and press corps.

Under the proclamation, men born in 1960 will be required to register in the first week, with those born in the first three months registering the first day. On each successive day, those born in the next three months of that year are expected to fill out postcards at their local post offices.

Males born in 1961 will be required to register beginning July 28. Next January, the Selective Service will ask men born in 1962 to begin signing up.

Carter's order starts up registration for the first time since 1975, when former president Gerald R. Ford put registration on "deep standby" status.

Although those who fail to register face prison terms of five years and fines up to $10.000, opponents predict that at least 10 per cent of the four million men affected will refuse to register.

White House officials strongly deny those predictions and Selective Service director Bernard D. Rotsker has said that more than 100 per cent of those asked to register, including men outside the age bracket who are patriotic, will sign up