S.-E. Aisa’s security involved in Bangladesh issue : JP
SINGAPORE, June 24 India’s veteran leader, Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan, today warned that unless the political problem of East Bengal was settled soon, the security of South and South-East Asia would be in danger, report agencies.
Mr. Narayan told a Press conference that Big Powers of the world should put pressure on Pakistani President Yahya Khan to make a political settlement in East Bengal to avoid a catastrophe.
He said the civil war in East Bengal brought a “colossal burden upon India economically, politically and socially.
“It is essential to end martial rule in East Bengal. The people in jail. including Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,” should be freed.
Then, he added, the Pakistan Government should begin negotiations with Mr. Rahman, “the representative of the people of Bangladesh.”
“I doubt if the people of Bangladesh will be contented anything less than an independent Bangladesh, as the provisional Primer of Bangladesh the other day said Pakistan is dead and burlied in the heaps of Bengali corpses.”
Asked about world opinion towards the Bangladesh independence movement and brutal treatment by Pakistani troops towards the Bengalis, he said : “They are now conscious about it, but some are still undermining the nationalistic spirifs of Bengalis, thinking that Pakistani troops will gradually subdue them.
“But don’t forget that 90 percent of the revolutionaries in the former British India came from East Bengal. It is not possible for freedom.”
“Bangladesh will be there,” he said. “The sooner Pakistan realizes it the better for all of us in South and South-East Asia.”
He said : “Bangladesh is in a strategic position as far as South-East Asia is concerned and if the Bangladesh movement does not succeed, a Maoist movement will fill the vaceum there.”
Asked whether Bangladesh soldiers were getting any arms help from outside. Mr. Narayan said : “Yes, in London, I met people who are collecting funds to buy arms and ammunition.”
On reports of US arms shipments to Pakistan, he said he requested American officials to halt all economic and military aid to Pakistan until martial rule is ended and power is handed over to elected representatives.
In Beirut. India’s Minsiter of Agriculture, Mr. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, arrived early yesterday on the first stage of his four-nation tour of West Asia to acquaint its leaders with the gravity of developments in Bangladesh and the massive problem faced by India on account of influx of over six million refugees.
Mr. Ahmed is expected to meet the Labanese Foreign Minister on Friday.
In East Berlin, Dr. Karan Singh. India’s Minsiter for Tourism and Civil Aviation, has said that his country could not take responsibility for the refugees who fled to India from Bangladesh after the recent fighting there.
“India cannot take over the responsibility for all these millions of refugees who have flowed into over-populated parts of India like a tidal wave,” the East German news agency, ADN, quoted him as saying yesterday.
“Conditions must be created in East Bengal to enable the refugees to return safely,” he added. Dr. Karan Singh, who came here as special envoy of the Indian Prime Minsiter, said he was very satisfied with the talks he had on Monday with the East German Prime Minister, Mr. Willi Stophn and the Foreign Minister, Mr. Otto Winzer.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 25.6.1971