BHUTTO CONDONES KILLING IN EAST PAKISTAN
“UNITY OF COUNTRY IS SUPREME”
MEMBERS OF BANGLA DESH GOVT. CROSS INTO INDIA
LONDON, April 19 (AP)
WEST PAKISTAN political leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Said monday the ‘slaughter’ in East Pakistan was regrettable but a compromise with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was impossible.
He told a British Broadcasting Corporation interview in West Pakistan : “It would have meant the end of a nation of 120 million people.”
Pressed to say if the amount of killing was .. a price too high to pay for unity’, Bhutto said, “the Unity of the country is supreme. There is no doubt about that’.
Bhutto leader of the Pakistan people’s party won an overwhelming majority in the Western wing in last year’s national assembly elections. However, Sheikh Mujib won even more seats in the more populous East and was poised to become Prime Minister of Pakistan when relations between the two provinces broke down. Bhutto said the West Pakistan army did not intend breaking the spirit of the Bengalis in the East. But he added We believe in democracy. Democracy means right to rule the country, to run the affairs of our country. I do not think democracy gives you the right to break up the country.
Reference : Indonesian Observer, 20.04.1971