New York, Oct 5
Pakistan today accused India of being actively engaged in a clandestine war against her. The only reason the situation had not escalated, the Pakistan delegate told the United Nations General Assembly, was that his Government had exercised the utmost restraint.

In a lengthy and angry attack on India, Mr Mahmud Ali said that at a time when it could have no conceivable fear of invasion, India had concentrated some 200,000 men and machines of destruction on the borders of East and West Pakistan and had been shelling and mortaring East Pakistan incessantly.

Were Indian rulers not hostile to Pakistan? he asked. Would they not find it unnatural and repugnant to take advantage of their neighbour’s difficulties?

Mr Ali pointed out that he came himself from East Pakistan. “I deplore that the situation in our homeland has been so distorted in the world’s eyes, its cause is so misrepresented, the sequence of events so disfigured, that it has been made to appear as if there is a war between East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Let an East Pakistani voice rise from this rostrum reminding the world that the people of East Pakistan and West Pakistan are brethren, joined in an imperishable union

There was a problem of reasonable autonomy, he said, but which large or multi-racial state was free of such problems?