India and Pakistan are beginning to make peace, not war, but it has been a desperately messy war, and it is likely to prove a messy peace. Tiger Niazi, for all his simple bravado, will try to negotiate his way out of the Dacca trap. India’s generals, fearful that victory may be internationalised away, are determined to drive a hard, bloody bargain. And complications abound. What does the ludicrously overemotional Mr. Bhutto mean by promising a “thousand years of war” at this stage? What does the silent Yahya think? Is he any longer in control? Why has America’s Seventh Fleet been dispatched to the Bay of Bengal? How angry (through a maze of conflicting press briefings) is the White House? Can the United Nations, like some insanely disorganised cavalry in a bad western, gallop over the horizon before Niazi’s last stand?

Many questions, with few answers as yet. But at least the sensible guidelines of settlement are tardily emerging; and Britain and France, at least, are uncommitted enough to nurse them towards reality. India, we now know with reasonable certainty, visualises no major onslaught into West Pakistan. Her aims are to secure Bangladesh, expel Yahya’s army, and set a Bengali Administration in its feet - then send the refugees back. In the circumstances these are tolerable-basic demands. They are better achieved without the destruction of Dacca, which can only encumber a new Government, as well as costing thousands of lives and vital goodwill. They need a clean end to warfare so that they can concentrate on preventing communal slaughter. They need Sheikh Mujib himself, the unquestioned symbol of Bangladesh - the crucial unifier.

These needs in turn give Pakistan some basis for descent negotiation. Yahya has Mujib and the power to cost Mrs. Gandhi more futile lives. Yahya can do his country some good by leaving the East expeditiously. He can avoid humiliation and further wreckage to his economy. He can find an honourable way out - a way that ends, once and for all, the blustering myths of eternal enmity towards India which so fatally warp West Pakistani life. Thus both sides' best interests (and commonsensical humanity) chime together for a cease-fire. One, say, which leaves the Pakistani heavy weaponry behind as spoils of war, but allows them to carry away their personal arms; one, possibly, which uses American ships, helicopters, and transport planes - preferably under UN auspices - to help get beleaguered pockets of Pakistani soldiers out of firing lines and then back to Karachi. But to outline so pat a conclusion is to tempt a malevolent Bengali fate.

Mr. Nixon, whose press aides sometimes make him sound a very petulant fellow, has caused widespread dismay, by statements which appear to attach more importance to his Peking party dates than finding a quick end to war. We cannot yet be assured that the Seventh Fleet are available for the logistics of peace - not the huff-puff of worrying Mrs. Gandhi. Nor, vitally, can we any longer be certain that a rational regime exists in Islamabad, a Government sober and calm enough to recognise the logic of defeat and come to terms with it. Mr. Bhutto’s absurd behaviour gives scant hope; the sullen confusion reported from Rawalpindi causes the gravest fear. This, surely, is the moment for China to bring their ally to the brink of measured decision. Fleet games, veiled threats, and more UN rhetoric will only extend the agony of Yahya and the agony of Bangladesh.