Karachi, March 24

Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the West Pakistan leader, launched the first phase of his promised noncooperation movement today, when it became obvious that President Yahya Khan intends to resolve the prevent crisis by handing over power to the East Pakistan leader, Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, and giving a great measure of autonomy to the rebellious eastern province.

Mr. Bhutto, who is taking part in talks with the President and the shaikh in Dacca, is obviously dissatisfied with the compromise formula being discussed. He has apparently decided, therefore, to put pressure on President Yahya by going to the streets in the powerful Punjab province of West Pakistan.

On Mr. Bhutto's instruction from Dacca, his party lieutenants opened a three-pronged movement in the Punjab today and issued public warnings that the Peoples' Party would "never forgive the present regime" if power was restored to a popular central government without the party's approval.

In Lyallpur the party demonstrated its strength by taking over 12 textile mills in the district. In Lahore Shaikh Rashid, the chairman of the Peoples' Party in the Punjab, announced that he would in future issue day-to-day orders to the administration from his residence.

Referring to the non-cooperation movement by which Shaikh Mujibur's Awami League has paralysed East Pakistan for 23 days, Shaikh Rashid said the People's Party had hitherto refrained from launching a similar movement under Mr. Bhutto's orders.

" If Mr. Bhutto instructed the courts to close down, nobody would disobey him. The President should not underestimate our power ", he told a meeting.

In his first order to the Government Shaikh Rashid said that unless land and properly was restored to evicted tenants in three days the People's Party would occupy the land forcibly.

At the same time Major-General Akbar Khan, the chief of Mr. Bhutto's newly raised militia, the People's Guards, instructed his volunteers to demonstrate their strength publicly during the next week. This, he hinted, would convince East Pakistan and the President that the People's Party was the largest single political force in the West.

In the meantime tension between 350,000 Bengali settlers in West Pakistan and the Sindhis and Punjabis is mounting by the day, and unless the present crisis is ended quickly by a political settlement the situation might lead to wholesale violence, which would rebound on the eight million non-Bengali refugees in the Eastern province. At least two people were killed and 12 were injured in clashes between Bengalis and residents today.

In spite of some misplaced optimism, all reports from Dacca indicate that the three leaders have still many issues to thrash out before they present Pakistan with a mutually acceptable compromise formula that would save the country from disintegration.

Mr. Bhutto made it obvious today that there is still no meeting ground between the Awami League and his party. He said it would have been better if the advisers from the Awami League, the People's Party and the President had met together for tripartite talks. They had met separately "but none the less we are making progress", he told the press.

In a direct hint that Shaikh Mujibur and the President have come to some broad term of agreement, the Secretary-General of the Awami League, Mr. Tajuddin Ahmed, told journalists after today's talks that the two teams of advisers had had discussions on the same lines as the principles agreed upon by the President and the shaikh.
It would appear that President Yahya will be confronted by an almost impossible task. With Shaikh Mujibur now in complete control of the administration of his province, the Bengali leader is unlikely to accept any provisional constitution which does not at least legalize the province's present, self-acquired measure of autonomy.

This would mean that the shaikh would accept only an interim arrangement under which the central government would be stripped of all subjects except defence and foreign affairs.

Pakistan's huge defence machine would then find itself dependent on the whims of the provinces for financial support. This in itself is enough to incur the wrath of the tinny and the powerful Punjab state, but, more important, the President would have to give the same degree of autonomy to the four provinces of West Pakistan. It is obvious that the central government would become virtually non-existent and Pakistan would dissolve into four separate nations in the western wing.

With every day that passes the large-scale exodus of non-Bengali refugees from East Pakistan and the stream of Bengalis from West Pakistan continue to grow in numbers. Almost 12,000 Urdu-speaking refugees are waiting nervously in Dacca for flights to the Western wing. Thousands more are seeking cheaper sea passages as the stories of harassment and violence spread.

A shipload of 1,200 Urdu-speaking refugees from East Pakistan arrived in Karachi on Monday night on board the m.v. Shams, and since then rumours and exaggerated reports of atrocities against non-Bengali settlers in East Pakistan have been spreading through Karachi.

It is obvious that any small spark could set off wide-scale communal clashes in West Pakistan.