From Our Own Correspondent
Paris, Nov 8
Mrs Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister, who arrived last night on a two-day official visit to Paris, emphasized today that the threat to the stability and security of India was also directed against the peace of the whole of South-East Asia. She was speaking at a luncheon given in her honour at the Elysée Palace by President Pompidou.

A political solution had to be found to the crisis in East Bengal, and “in order to be applicable it must be acceptable to the elected representatives of the people of Bengal”, the Prime Minister declared.

“What is going on in East Bengal is not a civil war in the usual sense of the word, but a genocide inflicted as a punishment io millions of people for the crime of having voted democratically.”

Mrs Gandhi said India was happy that China had been admitted to the United Nations, and that “the United States and China are beginning to deal with one another”.

President Pompidou, in his speech of welcome, also emphasized the need for a political solution to the East Bengal crisis, which presupposed the consent of the populations concerned. Otherwise, he feared that the whole Indian sub-continent might be swept into a conflict with incalculable consequences.

“I am convinced you will try to avert the worst,” he told his guest. The President added that India’s policy of non-alignment had “always provoked the strongest sympathy” in his country, “which fights for the suppression of power blocks”.

In a broadcast on French television this morning, Mrs Gandhi said she had endured enough provocation from Pakistan, but she would do everything to avoid war.