THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1971
WHY AID PAKISTAN?
After months of equivocation and evasion, the State Department has finally made .it clear that the Administration intends to keep on furnishing military and economic assistance to the Government of Pakistan despite continuing acts of repression in East Pakistah that have shocked the world. This incredible policy decision defies understanding.
The admission that aid is continuing as before undermines the credibility of the United States Government at home and abroad. The pubic, members of Congress and at least one vitally interested foreign government (India) had been led to believealthough always in evasive language-that all military assistance and any new development assistance for Pakistan would be held in abeyance until there was progress toward a political resolution of the crisis in East Pakistan. The exposure of this deception is likely to be particularly damaging to United States relations with India, whose foreign minister left Washington a few days ago with what he believed were firm assurances concerning American policy toward Pakistan that have now been thoroughly discredited.
The decision to continue economic aid puts the United States in defiance of the world Bank and the eleven-nation Aid to Pakistan Consortium, which has decided informally to refrain from making new aid commitments to Islamabad at this time. The Nixon Administration repeatedly in the past has indicated its policy would be to channel more and more United States aid through such international means in order to avoid the kind of unilateral decision it is now making in respect to Pakistan.
Administration officials say they opposed the consortium decision because it amounts to using aid as a political instrument. But at the same time they argue that the United States must continue aid in order to gain leverage to persuade President Yahya Khan to seek a political solution in the East. They can’t have it both ways.
Perpetuation of American aid to Pakis tan is not, in fact, likely to help persuade the military regime there to move toward restoration of genuine democratic government any more than continuing American support for the Athens junta has helped restore democratic rights to the Greek people. It will, however, put the United States in the untenable position of underwriting policies of repression, which have led to the ruthless and continuing slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Bengalis in East Pakistan. These policies have already driven more then six million East Pakistanis into exile in India where their presence creates grave political, social and economic tensions and a rising threat of domestic and even international conflict.
President’ Yahya’s recent proposals for restoration of civilian rule offer little hope for significant change since they continue to exclude the outlawed Awqmi league, the party which won an overwhelming majority of the votes in past Pakistan and an absolute majority of the seats in the unconverted National Assembly in last December’s election. Under this circumstance, can anyone? Washington explains how additional military or developmental aid to Pakistan can be justified morally fu terms of (his country’s pragmatic self-interest in peaceful, democratic development on the Indian subcontinent?