BRITISH MP DELEGATION VISIT PAKISTAN
Singh Meets With Heath
LONDON- An official British Parliamentary delegation flew out to Pakistan Monday to study the refugee situation at first hand.
The four-man mission, which is being sponsored and paid for by the British Parliament, will visit India as well as Pakistan in the course of a 10-day visit.
Delegates left less than 24 hours after the return to London of three other parliamentarians who spent eight days visiting Pakistan at the invitation of the Pakistani Government. This visit was not under parliamentary Suspices.
The three returning MPs spoke of gross exaggerations in reports of the situation in Pakistan.
“I think much of the exaggerated information filtering through Pakistan will now end,” said Mrs Jill Knight, Conservative, one of the three delegates.
The papers here in Britain are still reporting atrocities and shocking evidence of violence- but none of this is going on now.
The delegation whicn left here Monday comprised two former Labour government ministers. Arthur Botomley and Reginald Prentice; James Ramsden, former Conservative Secretary of State For War; and Toby Jessel, a Conservative MP.
Delegates were flying to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital by way of Geneva. They will spend two days in Islamabad and the same time in East Pakistan before going on by way of Bangkok to spend similar two-day periods in Calcutta and New Delhi.
Sing-Heath Meeting
In another development Monday, India’s visiting Foreign Minister Swaran Sing was holding meetings with Prime Minister Edward Heath and Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The minister is completing a tour of six capitals, including Moscow and Washington, to outline the complications caused for India by the refugee influx.
Reference : The Djakarta Times, 23.06.1971