Pak Flights Via Ceylon No Record
Of Type Of Goods Ferried
COLOMBO, Oct. 27—The Trotrkyist Minister of Communications, Mr. Leslie Goonawardene, today revealed that 31 Pakistani military aircraft and 143 Pakistan International Airlines planes transited Ceylon during the height of the Bangladesh crists.
In a report to the committee for human rights in Bangladesh, which his Lanka Sama Samaj Party backs to the hilt, the Minister disclosed statistics of Pakistant flights through Ceylon since India banned Pakistani planes overflying India. The Minster’s report, however, did not throw light on the type of goods of military or Civil planes ferried via Ceylon.
The Minister quoted statistics of Pakistani flights via Ceylon which he had obtained from the Civil Aviation Department and which, he said, should “lay at rest any idea that there was any complicity on the part of he Ceylon Government in the transport of troops or arms from west Pakistan to East Pakistan.”
The Minister was obviously basing his report on information that there were more in information that there were more Pakistani flight bounds westward to Karachi than to Dacca. The source of this information is of particular singnificance in assessing the real situation.
This correspondent had early in April spent two days at the Katunayake airport to obtain first hand information of operation procedures in refuelling Pakistani aircraft which landed at half-hour intervals. Within 15 minutes of landing each aircraft radioed a message to control tower starting that it was Karachi bound. Ceylonese air port authorities recorded the message faithfully in their log-books.
During refulling, uniformed Pakistani ground staff surrounded the planes and no passenger got down, Ceylonese officials did not check what the planes were carrying. There was of course no way of checking whether the planes were east or west bound. Control tower took each pilots message as true.
There has so far been no official reaction to the Ceylon daily Mirror’s firm assertion that the Government has banned Pakistani Military aircraft and vessels carrying troops and military hardware from transition Ceylon was correct.
The Foreign Office had earlier described the reports as “misleading.”
Reference: Hindustan Standard 27.10.1971