The Charity Commissioners in Britain have blocked the use of Pakistan disaster relief funds for the alleviation of suffering as a result of the East Pakistan civil war.

About £1m. of the £1.5m. raised in the United Kingdom after the catastrophic cyclone in East Pakistan has not been spent and cannot be while the war continues. It cannot, the Commissioners have ruled, be diverted to refugee relief.

The longer the war goes on the harder it will be for British aid charities to distinguish between the origins of the famine and disease in the province. A spokesman for one British charity said yesterday: " We cannot be expected to feed one man and turn away the next. We may have to pretend we can."

Strong fears are being expressed in London that the Pakistan military authorities may be tempted to use the withholding of food supplies — including that bought by international agencies — to bring resistance to heel in the rural areas.

Though allowing for the spread of false rumours, charity sources do not altogether reject reports that such a policy has already been started. Such tactics, but with measures to protect the civilian population, are part of the standard armoury of government troops fighting guerrilla forces, one relief organizer pointed out.

More than 30 tons of supplies for the relief of Pakistani refugees in India were taken by air out of Britain yesterday, bound for Calcutta. They were paid for out of the reserve funds of the three principal charities concerned, Oxfam, War on Want, and Christian Aid.

A civil war relief annual was launched last Sunday, although it is feared that the British public may not understand the need for this second effort and may in any case be "saturated" as far as Pakistan aid is concerned.

Some 150,000 tons of supplies are in storage in Chittagong, much of it paid for by private donations in Britain, the United States, Ireland, Belgium, Germany and Scandinavia. Probably only the British-bought part is subject to strict legal earmarking for cyclone disaster relief, as far as the British Relief Consortium is aware, but this is a substantial proportion nevertheless.

Christian Aid yesterday published the text of a message they had sent to Christian churches in Asia, appealing for help in restarting the flow of aid to the disaster area. The Pakistan Government has not permitted further British aid into the country and information about the destination of supplies already sent has been sparse.

Mr. Ian Macdonald, field coordinator of the British Relief Consortium who is a War on Want official, said yesterday that sufficient food for two months’ sustenance was believed to have been in the disaster area at the end of February. "The area should be suffering from food shortages by now at the very least," he added. "Certainly by the end of June they will be suffering from famine."

About 4,500,000 people are estimated by the consortium to be dependent on relief supplies and now at risk of famine. The cholera season should by now be over, but it could be lengthened if there was widespread malnutrition to lower resistance.

Emergency food supplies were intended to be sent only in the initial stage of the relief effort, until some normality could be restored to the agricultural economy in the affected region. Much British aid was to be in the form of machinery and technical staff to enable the April and May planting of crops to go ahead before the June monsoon. Then after the harvest the region could support itself, and perhaps export food to other areas us it had done in the past.

Without this harvest, Mr. Macdonald fears, a big international relief effort would be needed to avert mass starvation, not only in the cyclone-hit area but also in those usually dependent on it for food. Aid charities would be unequal to such a big task. It would have to be organized by the United Nations and would require support from governments.

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Dacca. May 6.-Lieutenant-General Tikka Khan, the military governor, told journalists at a reception here tonight that the military situation throughout East Pakistan was completely under control and he was considering abolishing the curfew in Dacca.

The general said massacres had taken place in East Pakistan but they were not committed by the army. After soldiers moved out of their cantonments on March 25 they discovered the widespread slaughter of innocent people.- Reuter.