Kennedy warned against divulging State secrets
WASHINGTON, July 24.-The State Department yesterday warned Senator Kennedy that it might refuse to co-operate with him on Pakistani relief problems if he continued to make public confidential diplomatic cables, adds Reuter.
Senator Kennedy released cables warning of impending famine in Bangladesh during a hearing on Thursday by the Senate judiciary SubCommittee on Refugees, of which he is the Chairman.
State Department spokesman, Mr. Charles Bray, said he had no idea how Senator Kennedy obtained the cables but he said in a volunteered statement:
“It will be difficult for us to continue a constructive dialogue with the committee and its members on the real human problems in Bangladesh if the Chairman abuses our confidence.”
The cables, from US Embassy officials in Islamabad and consular officials in Dacca, referred to recent field reports waring of the real possibility of coming famine in Bangladesh in the next few months.
An Embassy message made public by Senator Kennedy and dated July 15, said that the State Department statements minimising the danger of famine were interfering with efforts by the US Mission to get the Pakistan Government to face up to that possibility.
Senator Kennedy has been prodding the Nixon Administration to speed up its relief efforts to help Bengalis and has accused the Government of not being sufficiently aware of the danger.
Mr. Bray countered the implication in the cables that the Department was somehow covering up the extent of food shortages in Bangladesh.
He noted that as early as June the US Aid Mission in Pakistan began studying the food problem in Bangladesh.
A Department official on June 28 testified to the Kennedy SubCommittee that the USA recognised the problem of food shortages in Bangladesh, he said.
Mr. Bray denied that the US plans to send police training teams to Bangladesh. He was commenting on a New York Times report that said Senator Kennedy had implied this during the Senate hearing.
“There is absolutely no truth in the suggestions that we have plans to send police teams to Bangladesh or to resume the Public Safety Programme there, Mr. Bray said.
He said a US Public Safety official, who was evacuated in March when the civil strife broke out in Bangladesh, might return to Dacca for a short period to gather information on the State of police forces in Bangladesh.
The official, Mr. Robert Jackson, would have no operational responsibilities such as police training when he returned there, Mr. Bray added.
The “Public Safety Programmes” are euphemisms for counterinsurgency work, the sage type the USA launched in Vietnam to help the Diem regime leading to US involvement in the current Indo-China war.
Senator Kennedy asked US Under-Secretary of State, Mr. John Irwin, about this and, according to the New York Times. Mr. Irwin “appeared surprised.”
USAID Director, Dr. Herbert Rees, conceded that USAID official and police expert, Mr. Robert Jackson, who was withdrawn from Dacca following the March 25 Pakistani Military action in Bangladesh, is now going back.
Mr. Jackson has been employed by the agency since 1964 in police “training” in Vietnam and in Brazil, both areas where there are revolutionary movement and regimes sympathetic to the USA.
The ultimate in US-sponsored “Public Safety Programmes” has been the “Operation Phoenix’ in South Vietnam where Communist sympathisers and NLF suspects are assassinated on the quiet.
While US State Department officials gave out denials to Washington about the “Public Safety Programmes”, the New York Times quoted Congressinal sources as insisting nonetheless “that they had evidence that a plan is being drawn up to have US teams to help the Pakistani Army suppress Bengali resistance in East Bengal”.
According to the paper Senator Kennedy’s purpose in bringing up this question into public record was “to nip the scheme in the bud”.
The Kennedy disclosures bring into new focus the entire US policy and plans to back the Yahya regime and enable that military dictatoriship to maintain its hold over Bangladesh as part of what some critics say are the grand designs of the USA in Asia, it’s new Peking policy being party of these designs.
In the beginning or right till Dr. Henry Kissinger’s secret Peking visit, there were in America, and even some in Indian officialdom, who used to talk about commonality of aims and objectives of the world’s two greatest democracies. Such actions as US arming of Pakistan and its support to Islamabad were explained away as aberrations.
It now seems to be clear that the US Administration’s policy at least for the moment is to seek accommodation with Peking, to balance not only the Soviet Union but also Japan, whose growing economic giant status and near rivalry to the USA is causing great concern to opponents of power politics and balance of power theorists in Washington in this picture Pakistan plavs an important role.
Besides clandestinely arming Pakistan, US Administration had first tried to continue economic aid, in secret, and then through the World Bank. When the World Bank sent a team and brought out a devastating report, it was first sought to be suppressed. Now that it has been lacked out and published serious efforts are under way to get rid of some of senior officials of the Bank.
The US Administration is also using that effort to get rid of Mr. Robert McNamara from the Bank to put a Republican of their choice.
That is why reportedly Mr. McNamara, within the Bank itself and in public, has taken a strict correct attitude though that is not good enough for Islamabad or its backers in Washington.
Similarly at the U. N. in the early stages, through their men in the Secretariat, and even directly by discouraging. U Thant and talking about “international problems” the USA ‘ried to turn a blind eye to the massacres.
Now that the Yahya regime is finding it difficult to deal with guerrillas, a move is afoot to send UN observers into Bangladesh and into Indian refugee camps, ostensibly for humanitarian purpose of enabling the refugees to return.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 25.07.1971