Nation

From 1954 to 1965 we sold considerable quantities of weapons to West Pakistan, including forty-eight light tanks and sixteen Sabrejet aircraft. When hostilities broke out between West Pakistan and India, we embargoed further shipments. in 1967, however the embargo was eased to permit West Pakistan to buy spare parts and ammunition for the weapons we had furnished. All the evidence at hand indicates that these weapons, and the auxiliary equipment more recently furnished, were used in the blood bath the West Pakistani army inflicted on East Pakistan when that colony-which it is in fact-had the temerity to vote overwhelmingly for a measure of independence ( 167 out of 169 seats assigned to East Pakistan in the 313-seat national assembly-which never met).

As the massacres and raping were taking place, Washington looked the other way. True, we had not furnished all the arms; Chinese and Soviet weapons also saw action But it was not until June 12 (more than two and a half months after the carnage began) that the State Department took public notice. Since the influx of refugees was causing serious disturbance in India, our State Department appealed to India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and urged the Pakistanis to restore normal conditions to East Pakistan through "peaceful accommodation ."

The potential for further mischief in this region can hardly be exaggerated. East Pakistan was not 100 per cent Muslim. it contained some 10 million Hindus, many of whom would now prefer to live in India, where their misery and insecurity could scarcely be worse than in East Pakistan There is reason to believe that the West Pakistani army is exerting pressure on these people, while also perpetrating mass murder on their own coreligionists.

In The New York Times of April 18, Chester Bowles urged that we lodge a strong protest with the West Pakistani Government over the misuse of U.S. military equipment and cut off all aid except medical supplies and food. He also urged United Nations intervention. in the U.S. Senate, Senators Church and Saxbe have introduced an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act that would suspend economic and military assistance to West Pakistan, pending establishment of an international relief agency to give aid to East Pakistan, and until the majority of East Pakistanis are repatriated.

How seriously this will be taken by the Nixon Administration remains to be seen Unless relief action can be organized quickly and efficiently, and all the diverse interests and malignant hatreds of the region be at least temporarily allayed, the prospect for epidemics and famines in the future is nothing short of terrifying.