India does not want any territory, PM tells Nixon
NEW DELHI, DEC. 16.—The Prime Minister has declared that India does not want any territory of what was East Pakistan and now constitutes Bangladesh, reports PTI. India does not want any territory of West Pakistan either.
In a letter to President Nixon, Mrs. Gandhi said that on the contrary, India does want lasting peace with Pakistan.
She added: But will Pakistan give up its ceaseless and yet pointless agitation of the last 24 years over Kashmir? Are they willing to give up their hate campaign and posture of perpetual hostility towards India?
In the last 24 years. Mrs. Gandhi recalled her father and she had offered a pact of non-agression to Pakistan. “It is a matter of recorded history that each time such offer was made, Pakistan rejected it out of hand”.
After tracing the “origins of the tragedy”, Mrs. Gandhi said that during her visit to the US, France, Germany, Austria and Belgium she had emphasised publicly as well as privately, that there was immediate need for a political settlement. India waited nine months for it. When Mr. Kissinger came in August 1971, she had emphasised to him the importance of seeking an early political settlement. “But we have not received, even to this day, the barest framework of a settlement which would take into account the facts as they are and not as we imagine them to be”.
The Prime Minister expressed the hope that President Nixon “reflecting the will, aspirations and idealism of the great American people” would at least let her know “where precisely we have gone wrong before your representatives or spokesmen deal with us with such harshness of language”.
Mr. Gandhi said she was writing at a moment of deep anguish at the “unhappy turn” which the relations between India and the US had taken.
The tragic war, she said, could have been averted if during the nine months prior to Pakistani attack on India on December 3, the great leaders of the world had, paid some attention to the fact of revolt in East Pakistan, tried to see the reality of the situation and searched for a genuine basis for reconciliation.
War could also have been avoided if the power, influence, and authority of all the States and above all of the US had got Sheikh Mujibur Rahman released.
The Prime Minister said “lip service” was paid to the need for a political solution but not a single worthwhile step was taken to bring this about.
Instead the rulers of West Pakistan went ahead holding farcical elections to seats which had been declared vacant”.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 17. 12. 1971