1971-06-30
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Four or five ships carrying licensed United States military equipment will sail for Pakistan in the next month or two, U.S. officials said yesterday.
But, State Department press officer Charles Bray said, the equipment was all licensed for sale to Pakistan prior to the March 25 arms clamp-down.
Bray said one ship was already being loaded. Other officials said four or five vessels would set sail in the next one to two months.
Bray denied published reports that Secretary of State William P. Rogers would visit India and Pakistan for a first hand view of the civil strife in East Pakistan and the resultant refugee crisis in India.
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi rejected demands from some of her Congress Party members in Parliament that India go to war against Pakistan. She said her government would not "embark on any adventurist policies."
"Do not talk loosely of war or similar adventurist policies," Mrs. Gandhi reportedly told a party caucus. The meeting was closed to the press, but several members gave newsmen a summary of her remarks.
They said she reacted strongly to a suggestion from Y. S. Mahajan that West Pakistani forces "should be thrown out by military methods" from East Pakistan to enable "democracy to be restored and a popular government under Sheik Mujibur Rahman to be formed."
Mrs. Gandhi replied that the situation in East Pakistan is "a problem for the 75 million people of the area to decide themselves."
She said President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan's speech Monday night which ruled out any political compromise with Sheik Mujibur "vindicated India's stand that the military rulers in Pakistan are isolated from the people and have failed to respond to their democratic and secular urges."
She added that the speech "betrayed the failure of the military regime to install a puppet government" in East Pakistan.
Government sources said India's policy toward the crisis in East Pakistan would probably "stiffen" because of Yahya's speech, which was considered unconciliatory toward the East Pakistanis and hostile toward India. Rebel East Pakistani leaders condemned Yahya Khan's announced plan to return civilian rule to Pakistan. "Yahya's speech once again confirmed the fact that democracy is dead in Pakistan," a rebel Bengali said in Calcutta.
Mrs. Gandhi's government took over the administration of West Bengal State under President's rule," yesterday for the third time in three years, enabling New Delhi to deal directly with the influx of millions of East Pakistani refugees into the region.