St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Political domination and economic exploitation were among the causes of the outbreak of fighting in East Pakistan, spokesmen for East Pakistan League in St. Louis contend.

Dr. and Mrs. Mohammed Ahmed Kabir charged that West Pakistan had exploited the East Pakistan more than the British had.

"Ours is a nation where the majority province is dominated and exploited by the minority province." said Mrs. Kabir, a graduate of the London School of Economics.

Mrs. Kabir said that West Pakistanis had dominated everything in the eastern area from civil service to the military, since Pakistan was formed in 1947.

FUND INEQUITY

Although our jute exports account for more than half of Pakistan's foreign exchange earnings, the west continues to receive a larger share of development funds," Mrs. Kabir said.

She said there were more industries in the Punjabi- dominated West than in her province which has the large population.

East Pakistan has a population of more than 70,000,000 crammed into 54,000 square miles, compared with 55,000,000 in the west living in 310,000 square miles.

She charged that after a cyclone killed as many as 500,000 East Pakistanis last year, the central government in West Pakistan, for no apparent reason, stalled relief operations.

"This is one of several neglects with which we had been treated," she said.

Dr. Kabir, a psychiatrist at St. Louis State Hospital, said he thought the divide-and-rule policy of Britain was partly to blame for the crisis in his country.

"If the British had not come in, we probably would have been living peacefully with India as one country," he said. "The Hindus and Moslems lived there for more than 1000 years without problems." Pakistan formerly was part of the British colony of India.

ASSAILS BLACKOUT

Dr. Kabir was critical of the news blackout imposed by the central military government. He charged that more than 300,000 Bengalis had been killed in indiscriminate bombing of several highly populated areas.

In a related development, the Pakistani Association of Greater St. Louis adopted last week a resolution demanding, among other things, that the use of force in the eastern province be abandoned.

Mohammed Iqbal, president of the association and a student at Washington University, said that some injustice had been done to the East by the Western-based central government.

"I think we can profit a lot by remaining one nation," he said.