INDIA DENOUNCES U.S. FOR CONTINUING ARMS SUPPLY TO PAKISTAN
New Delhi, July 12 (AP)
FOREIGN Minister Swaran Singh denounced the United States Monday for continuing to supply arms to Pakistan, but rejected a demand from right-wing members of Parliament that India should recall its ambassador from Washington and refuse, further American economic assistance.
In a strongly-worded statement in Parliament, Singh said the supply of arms to Pakistan by any country amounts to condonation of ‘genocide’ In East Pakistan and encouragement to the continuation of the atrocities by the military rulers of Pakistan.
It also amounts to an intervention on the side of the military rulers of West Pakistan against the people of Bangla Desh (Bengali Nation). he added.
Singh singled out the United States for permitting millitary supplies to reach Pakistan even after the outbreak of civil strife in the country March 25 and said. “We have left the U.S. government in no doubt about the dangerous implications of such a policy on the situation in Bangla Desh and on the peace and stability of the subcontinent and the region as a whole.”
Singh discused the Indian Government had given the United States a written diplomatic protest a on June 27 over the arms controversy-one of the few times the Indian government is known to have taken such a formal diplomatic step towards the United States.
Leaders of the Rightwing Hindu nationalist Jana Sangh party demanded that India refuse any U.S. assistance for economic development or for caring for East Pakistani refugees as long as American millitary hardware is sent to Pakistan.
‘It may be difficult: Our development may suffer, but we must be self reliant,’ said G.P. Yadav.
‘We shouldn’t kneel down to take this aid,’ said Atal Bihari Vajpayee, President of the Jana Sangh.
Singh however turned down the appeal for an end to U.S. assistance, of which 70.5 million dollars have been pledged for refugee aid and 190 million for economic development this year.
‘At the present moment, I can’t make such a declaration’, he said.
Singh similarly rejected Jana Sangh suggestions that Indian recalled from Washington.
‘This is a drastic suggestion, but we have no intention to adopt his,’ he said.
The parliamentary debate was touched of by a statement by senator Frank Church, Democrat Idaho, last week that 35 million dollars worth of U.S. millitary equipment was still in the supply pipeline to Pakistan.
Reference : The Indonesian Observer, 13.07.1971