Calcutta. May 24
Mr. Tajuddin Ahmed, Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Bangla Desh, met me at a secret rendezvous point in East Bengal today to make an urgent plea to Britain and America for moral and material support.

First and foremost, Mr. Ahmed, whose Awami League party won 167 Bengali seats in the Pakistan National Assembly elections last December, asked Mr. Heath and Mr. Nixon to recognize his democratically elected government immediately.

At the same time he asked Britain and the world at large to halt all economic aid its Pakistan and to divert it to India for relief work among the three million refugees who have crossed the Indo-Pakistan border.

As I was escorted to the rendezvous point across the border today members of the Awami League asked me not to disclose the meeting place.

Mr. Ahmed, who is general secretary of the Awami League, had explained the events leading to the military suppression. "We are independent but I must stress that this was not secession in the normal sense. We wanted to participate in the union of Pakistan and as such we fought the elections. We won with an overwhelming majority of 167 seats of the 169 Bengali seats and, with the declared support of several West Pakistan parties, we should have been able to frame a constitution for Pakistan with a two-thirds majority.

"We wanted to keep Pakistan together and I can assure you there was no thought of secession until the Army cracked down on us on March 25. What happened? When the military junta and a section of the Western Region, the Punjab, saw they were not going to retain power through a democratic process they used force on us.
"What I can't understand is the fact that democratic countries continue to support a military junta and refuse to recognize a party which represents 99 per cent of the 75 million Bengalis who have been fighting for democracy."

Mr. Ahmed said that when democratic rule was imminent after the elections, three things had been realized in West Pakistan. "First", he said, "they had created a pattern of economy which cannot function under a democratic system."

Mr. Ahmed was alluding to the Awami League's allegations that East Bengal had been made the captive market of West Pakistan businessmen and that Bengali rule would have eliminated this system.

"Secondly, India was the excuse for building up a large army. They were prepared to spend 60 per cent of the budget on main-
Continued on page 6, col. 6 ….

Mrs Gandhi calls on big powers to find solution

…..Continued from page 1
-taining an army to keep us in subjugation and they knew we wanted friendly relations with India and we should have cut down on defence spending and ultimately the size of the army.

"And thirdly, and perhaps more important, they knew that the Awami League was a secular party which treated Hindus, Christians and Muslims as equal citizens. The whole rationale keeping such a large army was bound up with a continued confrontation with India and keeping the Kashmir issue alive. They knew that if we succeeded in framing a constitution all this would disappear and so they used force to crush democracy in Pakistan once again"

Mr. Ahmed does not blame President Yahya Khan personally for the debacle. "He was the instrument of Punjabi ambitions I am sure that he will not last long."

---

Our Delhi Correspondent writes : Mrs. Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister, called on the big powers today to find a political solution for East Bengal. Addressing Parliament, she said she was disappointed at the time taken by the world community in reacting to the wanton destruction let loose by West Pakistan military rulers.

Pakistan could not "seek a solution to the problem at the expense of India" by pushing hundreds of thousands of people over the frontier. "If the world does not take heed, we shall be constrained to take all measures as may be necessary to ensure our own security.

In spite of Mrs. Gandhi's strongly worded statement, opposition members walked unpacified out of both Houses.