AM RITA BAZAR PATRIKA, APRIL 14, 1971
CHINA’S THREATENING STANCE TO INDIA
New Delhi, April 13. The Chinese Premier, Mr. Chou En lai’s message to President Yahya Khan offering China’s all-out support to Pakistan’s military action in East Bengal posed a threatening stance towards India, according to China watchers here.
Official sources here, however, would not confirm any Chinese troops movements or concentrations along the Indo-Chinese border.
Official sources declined comment on the message sent yesterday but China watchers thought that the anti-Indian overtone was perhaps intended to boost Islamabad’s flagging moral. Chinese attitude is also seen more as a big power chauvinism in the affairs of the region as a whole as China is not directly involved in any way in any Indo-Pakistan differences over East Bengal developments.
These sources were surprised that China should have accused India of interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs when Chinese leaders and the press made critical comments of the communist leadership in Poland during the recent political upheaval there which led to the overthrow of Mr. Gomulka.
Official sources here have categorically denied that India had any intention of interfering in Pakistan’s internal affairs. India adhered to strict international norms which governed relations between two states, these sources added.
Observers here have also noted that the “peoples” Government of China has scant sympathy for a “peoples” movement in East Bengal against a minority military regime.
Meanwhile, Chinese Prime Minister’s statement was welcomed today by a spokesman of Mr. Z. A. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s party.
Radio Pakistan quoted Maulana Kausar Niazi, PPP information secretary, as saying in Lahore that Mr. Chou’s statement-which he characterised as a warning to India not to interfere in Pakistan’s internal affairs-was “a guarantee for peace in the region”.
He also claimed that with Mr. Chou’s statement “the balance of power has been maintained.”
Neutral
European experts on Chinese affairs, however, believe that China has decided to remain neutral” in the war between West and East Pakistan, says AFP from Paris.
The opinion of these specialists is radically different from that of both the Indian and the Pakistani press, and even of official circles in the two countries, which for diametrically opposite reasons tend to state that Peking has come out definitely on the side of Islamabad against the Bengali national movement.
But in fact, an analysis of the telegram sent to Pakistani President Yahya Khan by Chinese Premier Chou En Lai, parts of which were published in Rawalpindi yesterday show that the Chinese leader does not really come out for West Pakistan against the Bengalis but simply attacks India.
By slating that China will stand by Pakistan “should Indian expansionists dare to launch aggression against Pakistan”, Mr. Chou resembles a doctor who tells a man suffering from a heart disease, “don’t worry, I’ll cure your liver”.
While adopting a wait-and-see attitude toward the internal Pakistani crisis. China does not hide its aggressive attitude towards India.
This fact, in the opinion of experts is not due only to the traditional close relations between China and Pakistan. At a moment when a certain thaw has begun to appear in Sino-Indian relations Peking is believed to have, been annoyed by the fact that New Delhi, in the Pakistani crisis, consulted only Washington and Moscow, and not Peking. – (PTI).
United States officials tend to discount any danger of imminent Chinese intervention despite Premier Chou En lai’s strong support to Islamabad and pledge to help against India.