To the Editor:

Bernard Gwertzman reports from Washington the attempt of the White House to explain its bungling of efforts to avoid war Between India and Pakistan [news story Dec. 8]. White House officials are said to have explained that President Nixon sent two personal messages to India; that Secretary of State Rogers met with the Indian Ambassador eighteen times, and Mr. Kissinger met with the Indian official seven times.

There is no mention of the number of times Mr. Bush, our Ambassador to the United Nations, conferred with others at the U.N. There is no mention of any top‐level communication from Washington to the Secretary General of the United Nations.

One contrasts the actions with those in June 1950 when the Korean aggression occurred: In the middle of the night our Ambassador to the United Nations, Ernest Gross, was instructed to telephone Secretary General Trygve Lie and to call for an immediate meeting of the Security Council.

One had hoped that the disastrous policies of the United States in Vietnam would have convinced this Administration that one cannot solve by unilateral measures the problems of a multilateral international community and that the channel for multilateral diplomacy is through the United Nations, which can hardly be strengthened if the United States continues to treat it with contemptuous indifference.

Philip C. Jessup
Norfolk, Conn., Dec. 8, 1971