NEW AGE, APRIL 25,1971
US ENVOY’S BLUFF ON BANGLADESH EXPOSED
The US Ambassador’s bluff has been called. Kenneth Keating struck the headlines in the obliging monopoly Press here a few days ago by declaring that his government did not regard the regent gory happenings in East Bengal as an internal affair of Pakistan. It was a clear attempt to play to the gallery without any basis for it in US official policy.
The phrase internal affair is overworked, he said. “This certainly is not a case of internal affair”. Keating announced with great aplomb in Bombay on April 15.
Hardly four days could pass before this inflated balloon was pricked. The official word came from the State Department putting Keating in his place and reiterating the well known US position. The Department’s spokesman in Washington, Robert McCloskey, stated bluntly, in reply to pressmen’s questions asking for comment, on Keating’s Bombay statement that on April 2 he (McCloskey) had stated that “it was our view that what is going on in Pakistan is an internal matter”. And there the matter stood as far as the US Government was concerned, he said.
American Tanks in Action
The American lobby in India has been trying hard to soften the blow dealt to the people of East Bengal by the US attitude, saying that “in action” the US is not hostile to the freedom fighters. Facts Completely refute this make believe nonsense. The same State Department spokesman, Robert McCloskey, had told pressmen a few days earlier that since 1966-61, US sales of military items to Pakistan-both on commercial and on credit terms-had in fact been running at “just under” ten million dollars annually. Of these 25 per cent, that is about 2.5 million dollars worth of material had been in the form of ammunition. (International Herald Tribune, April 15, 1971)
This exposes the earlier lies kept afloat by the US that since its resumption of military supplies to Pakistan in 1966.67 the US had been giving only non-lethal weapons to the military dictatorship in Islamabad. The US had claimed then that supplies consisted predominantly of military personnel carriers and communications equipment. It has now had to acknowledge that the bullets and bombs which have killed lakhs of innocent East Bengalis and continue lo kill over more of them, originated mostly in the US.
And (his supply is still being maintained, despite all protests and demands from sections of American opinion and from the governments and peoples of Bangladesh and India.
Earlier a despatch in the New York Times from its Washington bureau dated April 11 had acknowledged that the US was continuing to ship to Pakistan ammunition and spare parts for weapons under a programme begun in 1967.
“There is growing evidence”, said this despatch, “that the Pakistani army has been using American tanks, jet aircraft and other equipment in its attempt to crush the movement for autonomy by the predominantly Bengali citizens in the eastern half of the country.
“That equipment was shipped from 1954 to 1965 at which time the US embargoed further arms shipments to Pakistan. The embargo was eased in 1967 to permit Pakistan to buy spare and ammunition for (he weapons.” (International Herald Tribune, April 12, 1971)
While the US continues to sanction the use of its arms and ammunition in the West Pakistani military junta’s hands for the mass butchery in East Bengal no embargo has been placed on continuation of the supplies resumed in 1966-67. and none seems likely at all. The word has come from their brothers at the other end of the Atlantic now advising the Bangladesh freedom to abandon their resistance and submit to butchery like lambs. A report in the Indian Express, fighters April 21, datelined London says:
“A discreet move is afoot in Britain to persuade East Bengal political circles here to abandon plans for armed resistance to West Pakistan’s military…”
Between the two of them the US and British imperialists arc out to see the freedom fighters of East Bengal crushed, so that Yahya and his minions can rule undisturbed for years and decades to come. While Keating pours out honeyed words on Indian soil his superiors across the seas continue to stab the Bangladesh fighters in the back every moment.
A growing volume of democratic opinion in both UL and Britain demands the staying of the hands of the butchers and acceptance of Bangladesh demands.