ISLAMABAD, WEST PAKISTAN.—In discussions of American-Pakistani relations, Americans stress the importance of ongoing private contracts and Pakistanis stress the lpublic friendliness of President Nixon despite sharp congressional protest over the military action in East Pakistan.
In American eyes, the influence gained in private—"leverage" is the popular diplomatic term—offsets the disadvantages of an angry India, a disappointed East Pakistani independence movement and the critical popular reaction in much of the world to the Nixonian embrace of Pakistan's President Yahya Khan.
In Pakistani eyes, the embrace is all-important to a nation which has found itself increasingly isolated since it ordered its troops to move into East Pakistan last March 25.
"The United States is the only major Western power that has retained the ability to talk to the government of Pakistan," is the American response to questions about administration policy.
The United States is gambling that it is better off keeping its criticisms of Pakistan private and trying to use what influence Washington has to moderate the crisis here.
Present American policy, in the main, is consistent with U.S. attempts since the 1965 India-Pakistan war to prevent a new war and to maintain friendly relations with both countries.
However, while the aims remain logical and workable in theory, one observer remarked, "It is a logical policy applied to an illogical part of the world."
A key test of the success of American leverage will be Pakistan's treatment of East Pakistan's political leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
President Yahya Khan has publicly called Majibur a traitor, and no one is predicting that the military court charged with trying the sheikh will find him not guilty.
However, those who believe in the value of leverage think that the government will stop short of executing Mujibur in answer to arguments that Pakistan's hopes for new foreign aid commitments would die with the Bengali leader.
In one of America's few public expressions of displeasure with the course of events in Pakistan, Secretary of State William P. Rogers warned that "any summary action" against Mujibur could lead to diminished American support for the Pakistani government.
Rogers' statement was vague, but since the government had already arrested Mujibur, held him incommunicado and put him on trial for his life before a military court in an officially undisclosed location behind closed doors, there seems no further "summary action" the secretary could have had in mind except execution.
Set against U.S. and other nations' efforts to avoid Mujibur's execution are reports here that Yahya Khan has angrily terminated several discussions With foreigners when the name of the East Pakistani leader was raised.
No one here is talking about what points the United States has considered important enough to raise in the continuing private contacts with Pakistan's government.
U.S. Ambassador Joseph S. Farland, a friend of President Nixon's who has direct lines to the White House, is reported to have established a cordial relationship with Yahya Khan. Most serious American-Pakistani talks are between Farland and the Pakistani president.
If—as seems likely—Farland has urged Yahya to accept United Nations observers in East Pakistan, to reinstate a maximum number of the East Pakistani politicians elected on Mujibur's Awami League ticket and to moderate the brutality of the military suppression in East Pakistan, there have been mixed results.
And, where Yahya has acted along the lines of American advice, it is impossible to determine whether that advice was determining or even an important factor in his actions.
Yahya has agreed to welcome U.N. observers, and last week he relieved Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan, who had been martial law administrator and governor in East Pakistan since the crisis began. The savagery of army behavior in East Pakistan has been largely attributed to Tikka.
Aside from attempts to influence Pakistan's government through maintaining good public relations, the United States has also decided to do all it can to prevent famine in East Pakistan this fall.
Although adequate supplies of foodgrains seem likely to be available, distribution will be a serious problem because of disruption by the civil fighting and the collapse of the civil administration.
It is also agreed, however, that preventing famine is only a small part of what will be needed to restore normal and peaceful life in East Pakistan, and there are many foreign diplomats here who believe that Pakistan will never succeed in re-establishing the unity of the nation, no matter what emergency food aid or friendly advice the government is offered and accepts.