By a Staff Reporter
Members of the Bangla Desh youth movement in Britain yesterday delivered a letter to Mr Heath asking him to divert aid from the Pakistan Government towards refugees in India.

The letter was handed over after about 1,000 supporters of Bangla Desh had marched from Hyde Park Comer to Trafalgar Square, depositing a similar letter for Mr Nixon at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square on the way.

The march was the first demonstration in what amounts to a concerted effort by Bangla Desh supporters in Britain to stop all 10 countries of the Pakistan aid consortium from sending any more help to the Pakistan Government.

Leaflets distributed during the march said: “Pakistan is bankrupt. Its rulers can only continue their brutal war of oppression against the people of Bangla Desh if their economy is propped up with foreign economic aid and loans.”

Throughout this week the “Stop Aid to Pakistan Committee”, made up of Bangla Desh supporters, are demonstrating outside British Government offices and the London embassies of Canada, France, Belgium, West Germany. Austria, the United States, Japan, Holland and Italy.

Mr Paul Connett, a representative of Action Bangla Desh is flying to Paris today to try to get French support for his cause when the aid consortium countries meet there on June 22.

The march passed off without incident. Banners carried said: “Recognize Bangla Desh” and there were shouts of “Not a penny, not a gun”. A woman outside Horse Guards Parade told some of the marchers to go back to Bangla Desh until her daughter pointed out that some of the demonstrators were white.

In their letter to Mr Heath the marchers also urged the immediate recognition of Bangla Desh and the appointment of a British deputy high commissioner in Dacca.

A medical team led by Dr Roger Hickman, of the London Heart Hospital, left London for Calcutta yesterday to work in West Bengal

With Dr Hickman were his wife Susie, a nurse whom he met working for the fund in Biafra, and three other nurses. Susan Bendy of Bracknell, Fiona Taylor of Sittingbourne and Pat Thompson of Preston.

Air India took but a large consignment of water purifying tablets and anti-cholera vaccine on a flight from Heathrow. Supplies of saline solution together with 500 narrow-gauge needles suitable for children’s veins, will be ferried on another flight from Gatwick.

The Disasters Emergency Committee, which represents five charities, said last night that in spite of “the absolutely marvellous response” from the British public, it was hoped that the volume of money donated to the Pakistan refugees would be maintained and increased.

Although £475,000 had been received to date by the emergency committee, it was estimated that supplies already sent and earmarked for India left a surplus of only about £130,000.