By Our Foreign Staff
The Soviet Union has secretly agreed so supply India with a large consignment of weapons, according to informed sources in Hongkong yesterday. The arms agreement was made when relations between India and Pakistan were already tense, but before the build-up of troops on the Indian-Pakistan borders during the past two weeks.

The Soviet Union has been the main foreign supplier of weapons to India for a decade. The new commitment was made after the Russians signed a “treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation” with India on August 9.

The sources did not disclose details of the agreement but it seems to be directly tied to the mounting border tension and Indian arming of guerrillas in East Pakistan.

India has a large armaments industry and produces its own small arms, ammunition, tanks, vehicles and other equipment. If a war with Pakistan were to erupt, however, India would need its Soviet-supplied weaponry for such things as a naval and air blockade of East Pakistan.

There is little likelihood of the Russians involving them own soldiers in an India-Pakistan war but the treaty provides a warning that the Soviet Union might help if Pakistan is aided by China.

The Pakistan Government claimed last night that its forces had killed 438 enemy troops on Sunday and another 63 yesterday in heavy fighting in East Pakistan. The enemy involved was identified as “Indians and Indian agents”, and the communique said some of the bodies were wearing identification tags of the Indian Army.

Casualties in such numbers indicate that fighting has reached its greatest intensity since the brief war fought by India and Pakistan over Kashmir in 1965. Pakistan did not mention its own military casualties, but said that Indian shelling of eight East Pakistani villages yesterday had killed 67 villagers.

Meanwhile, the leaders of both countries made appeals to outside mediators. Mrs Indira Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister, called on President Sadat of Egypt to help find a solution to the dispute while President Yahya Khan of Pakistan addressed his appeal to U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations.

In her message to President Sadat, Mrs Gandhi said that the troop concentrations on both countries’ borders were a “natural development” from the tension between the two slates. According to the newspaper Al Ahram, the Egyptian leader promised to exert efforts to “avoid a new deterioration” in the situation.
President Yahya has, it is reported, asked for the personal intercession of U Thant.
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India’s secret arms pact with Moscow

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According to Pakistan radio, he has proposed that United Nations observers be posted on both sides of the border between East Pakistan and India to supervise a mutual withdrawal of forces to an agreed distance.

He suggested that troops and armour be withdrawn by both sides to “peacetime positions”, thus implying for the first time that India and Pakistan are in a state of war. If this was not possible, a withdrawal should be made to positions affording security to both nations, he said.

The Pakistan President said that an immediate visit to the area of confrontation by U Thant would yield “useful results”. He reiterated Pakistan charges that border tensions have been caused by India's aggressive designs.

Speaking in Brussels last night, Mrs Gandhi, who is making a tour of western capitals, said the military rulers of Pakistan had terrorized and persecuted nine million East Bengalis, and their flight was jeopardizing the lives of Indians. It was a genocidal programme against civilians, carried out because they had voted democratically. It was a cynical use of military force.

Any action to deal with the crisis would have to tackle the basic cause of the present situation, and this would involve a political solution, acceptable to those elected by the “people of Bangla Desh”.

On Friday Mrs Gandhi will be in London for talks at the weekend with Mr Heath at Chequers. She will be met at the airport by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the Foreign Secretary, who will have fuller talks with her on Monday.

In Bombay, dock workers lifted their boycott of a West German merchant ship after the vessel’s agents agreed to unload four cases of guns addressed to Chittagong.

The All-India Port and Dock Workers’ Federation had refused to allow the ship to leave or to unload goods destined for Bombay because they said it was carrying arms and ammunition for the Pakistan Army.

More than 100 MP’s last night signed a Commons motion deploring the sentences of two years' imprisonment imposed by Pakistan on Mrs Ellen Connett and Mr Gordon Slaven “for the ‘crime’ of distributing relief to hungry people in last Bengal”. Mrs Connett, an American, and Mr Slaven, of Hampstead, London, were members of Operation Omega, a pre-Bangla Desh group.