Faced by growing pressures among British MPs of all parties for intervention in Pakistan’s civil war, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the Foreign Secretary, has taken a direct initiative to obtain international support at least for getting urgent relief supplies into East Pakistan. He held confidential talks with U Thant, United Nations Secretary-General, when U Thant passed through London last week, and he has discussed the problem with the US Secretary of State, Mr. William Rogers.

Sir Alec, is known to feel very strongly about the tragedy of the East Bengalis, but he is anxious not to disrupt Britain’s good relations with General Yahya Khan’s Government. Yet the Russians for the first time officially condemned Pakistan’s policy in East Pakistan. Pravda expressed scepticism about official Pakistani claims of stability in the rebel territory. It reflected the grave concern felt in high Russian official circles that the tragedy of East Bengal could lead to a larger conflict between India and Pakistan, with possible involvement of China, and warned that continuing bloodshed not only harmed the interests of the Pakistani people but ‘also harms the cause of peace in Asia and all over the world’.

An unprecedented group of nearly 300 British MPs, covering the spectrum of political opinion from the Rev. Ian Paisley and Sir Gerald Nabarro on the right to Mr. Andrew Faulds and Mr. Ian Mikardo on the left, have backed a motion in use all its influence to secure a cease-fire in East Pakistan. The motion was introduced by Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann, Labour MP for North Kensington, who has just returned from a visit to India and the rebel headquarters of Bangladesh. It will be debated in the Commons on 14 May.

Mr. Douglas-Mann told me yesterday: ‘I believe it is impossible ever again for Pakistan to become one country. East Bengal can be held down only for a time by brute force against continuous hatred and growing guerrilla activity.’ His view that the situation could develop into a major war, possibly involving India, is shared by Mr. John Stonehouse, MP, the former Labour Minister, who also has just returned from West Bengal, from a fact¬finding mission on behalf of War on Want and Oxfam. Mr. Stonehouse, in a report to Sir Alec Douglas-Home, stressed that the logistical problems faced by West Pakistan are so great that it is inconceivable that they will for long be able to sustain a campaign of repression against 75 million people.

Both Mr. Stonehouse and Mr. Douglas-Mann independently formed the impression that with the monsoon rains starting early this year a new phase of guerrilla warfare will be mounted over the next few months. ‘It is completely misleading to suggest that the fighting has stopped in East Bengal’, said Mr. Douglas-Mann. ‘At the headquarters of the Bangladesh Army I saw 400 men of the East Bengal Regiment training over 500 volunteers. They had plenty of modern weapons, including machine-guns and rifles, and some mortars, a fleet of trucks.’

Mr. Frank Judd, MP, who is one of Mr. Harold Wilson’s parliamentary private secretaries, yesterday wrote to the Foreign Secretary urging the immediate suspension of British aid to Pakistan. ‘While I appreciate the strength of the argument about ton-intervention in the internal affairs of an independent State,’ Mr. Judd saicho me, ‘it seems increasingly clear that the choice in Pakistan is not one between non-intervention and intervention. The issue is about what sort of intervention.’ He said that Britain was already intervening by participating in the Aid Consortium to Pakistan which is currently meeting in Paris. ‘This aid,’ he continued, ‘directly supports President Yahya Khan’s Government, which therefore implicates us to the hilt in the terrible events of East Pakistan. A suspension of aid would, of course, be a form of interventions, but it would surely be better intervention than the present form. If aid is really partnership, as is usually claimed, a healthy partnership means the partners may justly state their terms.’

An urgent appeal for British relief is made in a cable to the World Council of Churches from Rev. John Hastings of Calcutta Urban Service Consortium, who has just returned from an extensive visit to the outlying parts of East Bengal. He estimates that almost a million Bengali refugees have crossed the frontier into India and thinks that the number could rapidly increase to two million. Over 60 per cent of the refugees are Muslims, and they are at present being held in the same camps as Hindus. For the present, Bengali nationalism is keeping communal feelings in check, but there are opportunities for trouble-makers to exploit the fact that the Indian Government’s allocation of 6 p per day per person for refugees is rather more than is being spent on the destitute Indians of West Bengal.

War on Want and Oxfam have both launched a campaign for massive funds to assist the refugees. The first British relief plane to Calcutta will leave London on Tuesday. Although British relief organizations still hold £1,500,000 of the funds raised at the time of the flood disasters in the East Bengal delta, they have been told by the Commissioner of Charities that this money can be used only in that area. There is reported to be considerable famine there, but no way is open of getting relief into that part of the country unless the Pakistan Government agrees to cooperate. So far Pakistan remains adamantly opposed to international relief services working in East Bengal.