YAHYA OFFERS AMNESTY
Karachi, May 24 (AP)- IN his first meeting with newsmen since the Pakistan Army’s crackdown in East Pakistan, President Yahya Khan said Monday he would grant amnesty to banned Awami League members “Who were genuinely misled.”
But the military President swore to punish members of the majority party in the December election who has committed crimes and claimed that party leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had plotted to arrest him but the President refused sharply to discuss Sheikh Mujib’s fate.
He revealed that American President Richard Nixon had offered Pakistan assistance in what Yahya, catled a “warmhearted kind personal letter of friendship.” received saturday.
He repeated a welcome to refugees who had fled Pakistan for India but said he . would not “open the floodgates for Indian destitutes” who might try to cross into the East.
An Indian allegation that the Pakistan government drove people from East Pakistan with a ‘campaign of terror’ is “totally false, and unwarranted”. Pakistan said
Monday.
A Pakistani note, replaying to an Indian note of May 14 said India was largely to blame for what ever refugees there might be in India.
“These people become the victims of conditions created by India’s armed infiltration into East Pakistan, false and distorted Indian propaganda, and largely exaggerated accounts of Incidents put out by the Indian news media,” It said.
The note asked India not to “mediate” in the internal affairs of Pakistan or to sit in judgment over developments in East Pakistan.
Reference : The Indonesian Observer, 25.05.1971