Financial Times (London)

The original responsibility for this latest episode in the Indo-Pakistan conflict is so glaringly obvious that there is surely no need to labour the point. Unless the Indian forces are utterly incompetent, President Yahya Khan has brought down upon his country a defeat, and probable dismemberment, which many will consider well-deserved. The arrogant folly of his policies in the East has been matched in degree by the savagery of the repression of the Bengali population and by the tragic prospects of the refugees who have fled from his troops.

And yet, a more direct, more recent, more considered, more deliberate, responsibility for this war must belong to the Indians. The simple fact is that the Government of Mrs. Gandhi has skilfully and unremittingly exploited the consequences of Yahya’s policies in Bengal so as to bring about the war which is now being waged at disastrous cost on all fronts. The Indian tactic can be traced back to the early summer: Delhi has used the refugees partly to erect before the world a justification for war with Pakistan and partly at the same time as actual cover for the invasion into East Pakistan of the Indian Army.

PROVOCATION

At very least this was the most extreme provocation of the Pakistan Government, and it was sustained and intensified over months. More accurately, it amounted to a deliberate courting of war, a blatant challenge to Yahya which the Pakistani leader seems to have tried to evade until the moment of his last desperate bid on Friday at a pre-emptive, strike in the West. We do not know whether Mrs. Gandhi was personally determined on war from the beginning, as some of her Ministers were. Maybe she thought she could drive Yahya into such difficulties in the East that he would surrender politically and grant East Bengal semi-autonomy. If this was her tactic - which she could conceal behind her emphasis on the plight of the refugees - all that can be said is that she was wrong. She misread Yahya, and drove him to war.

The alternative is that she was all along (or became some time ago) a secret hawk, authorising her soldiers to step up pressure in the East and protect the guerrillas even while she was protesting to the world that she was a woman of peace. So either Mrs. Gandhi is guilty of miscalculation or she is guilty of something more. The latter assumption comes down to the argument that the waging of war against a neighbouring state is justified in order to force a change in that state's internal policies. That argument is too dangerous to be acceptable.

TASHKENT

From the diplomatic point of view the war could hardly have come at a worse time. Hopes of an adequate Security Council response to the situation look grim. The Soviet Union and China - openly abusing each other at this the first big crisis at the UN since China joined - are each apparently committed more strongly than ever to the different sides, though hopefully both might wish to hold back from a fuller involvement. Moscow already seems too firmly pledged to an Indian victory in the East for there to be much hope of a return to Tashkent, and the Americans have too many other preoccupations, tempting them to allow the two sides to fight it out for a while in the hope that a solution will somehow emerge.

It is a situation where a modest British role might not be inappropriate. If the Government is not yet so “European” as to have forgotten its own considerable involvement and influence in the region, if Indo-British relations have indeed improved recently as has been claimed, and if British reprimands of Yahya last March were not so strong as to have closed all doors in Islamabad, it might be possible for Sir Alec to consider whether a British initiative, in co-ordination with the UN, would be acceptable.