The time has come for the United Nations Security Council to take up on an urgent basis the threat all‐out war along the Indian‐Pakistani border. Only the United Nations has the possibility of acting effectively to defuse this situation for which Pakistan bears by far the heavier responsibility, but which clearly now constitutes a threat to international peace and security.

Pakistan claimed yesterday that India had launched an “all‐out offensive” in the Jessore area of East Pakistan. It seems probable that the scale of the action and the size of the Indian forces involved are being wildly exaggerated by the Pakistanis. If so, India should welcome an examination of the situation by the Security Council and perhaps an on‐the‐spot investigation by neutral U.N. observers. There can be little doubt that India has been building up its forces systematically along the border and putting them on a war footing, even carrying out counter‐thrusts in support of rebel Pakistani guerrillas against regular Pakistani forces in Bengal.

The basic cause of the war threat to the subcontinent remains, however, the effort by President Yahya Khan to suppress the elected leaders of East Pakistan and to rule that province by armed terror. It was this brutal action that provoked the headlong flight into India East Pakistani refugees now said to number more than nine million.

Thus abruptly burdened with an economic and social problem of almost unimaginable proportions, India understandably resents any proposal for U.N. intervention that might appear to equate its behavior with that of the Pakistani Government. Yet action under U.N. auspices represents the only possibility in sight for restoring peace and eventually repatriating the refugees.

In rejecting U Thant's offer to try to help ease the tensions between. India and Pakistan, Prime Minister Gandhi said correctly that the “root of the problem the fate of the 75 million people of East Bengal and their Inalienable rights.” But the best hope of securing the rights of those people, including the nine million now on Indian soil, lies in the cooperation of both India and Pakistan with the Secretary General or any other instrument of the United Nations that the Security Council may designate.