RTT file - US Diplomatic Messages

Senator Edward M. Kennedy has again called on the United States to stop all military and economic aid to West Pakistan until that country comes to a political accommodation with East Pakistanis now under military occupation as a result of their claims for greater political and economic freedom.

At the same time the United States should greatly expand its present humanitarian aid to India to help her care for millions of East Pakistanis who have taken refuge on her soil, the senator said in a speech to the National Press Club on Thursday.

He said that although current U.S. humanitarian help for the refugees amounts to about 80 million by far the largest single country contribution of some 150 million dollars being collected by the United Nations for such help, Senator Kennedy said he would introduce a proposal for expanding the help in the Senate when it resumes its deliberations in September.

The senator estimated the Indian outlay on behalf of the refugees this year could range from 500 to 1,000 million dollars.

Senator Kennedy said he would also make a special report to the Senate on his recent week-long inspection-tour of East Pakistani refugee camps in India and that he planned to hold further hearings on the refugees in his capacity as Chairman of the senate sub-committee on refugees.

He said he was appalled by his findings during the recent visit to refugee camps in India.

"Not until you see it first hand can you feel its intensity",, the Senator said in describing the desperate conditions he found for young and old among the refugees.

Senator Kennedy said that while India, with its own pressing needs, could have closed its borders to the refugees, it was to her "everlasting credit" that she chose instead "the path of compassion" towards them.

While India’s efforts for the refugees are "Herculean, he said, it is beyond her capacity and her moral obligation to assume the burden alone. He called on all countries to assume their rightful share of a burden he said was truly international.

Senator Kennedy criticised what he called US. Government rationalisation that its continued help to West Pakistan gave the United States leverage to ameliorate conditions for the East Pakistanis.

Such leverage has not been used so far, he said, to get Pakistan to stop using U.S. arms and economic assistance against the East Pakistanis or to stop the secret trial of East Pakistan leader Sheikh Mujibur.

He cited an instance of West Pakistan’s diversion of American rivercraft designed to help Pakistan’s internal commerce to be used for military assaults on East Pakistanis.

Senator Kennedy said there could be no final solution of the East Pakistan crisis until there is a political accommodation by West Pakistan with the just aims of East Pakistanis for more political and economic freedom.

The current crisis, he said, represents "not only a tragedy for Pakistan and India but for the world".

If it is not solved expeditiously and justly, he said, it could be a "Terminal Cancer" blighting both India and Pakistan.

In his speech and in his response to questions, there was no reference to the fact that he was denied entrance into Pakistan to study the situation there and to talk with Pakistani leaders.

There was also no reference to complaints voiced by Senator Kennedy’s staff assistants in India that there was a breakdown in co-operation provided to them by the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi — a charge denied by the Embassy.

Responding to questions, Senator Kennedy said that while refugee conditions are distressing both in the Middle East and the Indian refugees camps, the situation in India is "most depressing" because of its sheer magnitude and said the refugee situation in both areas could be solved adequately only through a political settlement.

He further said he would not recommend a break in U.S. diplomatic relations with Pakistan at this time but that this move should be considered now for possible use later if U.S. "leverage" continues to be ineffective.

He declined to pin a "left-wing socialist" tag on Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and said she was pursuing a policy of doing what is best for India "in a way completely consonant with American interests whatever level you give her".

Reiterated his previous stand that he was not a presidential candidate in 1972 but said that he expected to play an important role in developing the domestic and foreign policy platforms on which the democratic party would stand in the 1972 presidential race.

SOUTH ASIAN REPORTING IN U.S. NEWSPAPERS

The Monitor’s "letters to the editor" column published the complaint of Dr. John Rhode of Boston, formerly of the Pakistan-Seato Cholera Research Laboratories in Dacca that early warnings by civilians like himself as well as "high officials in the state department posted at Dacca" were ignored with tragic consequences to human lives in strife- torn East Pakistan. "Today, four months later," said Rhode, "the holocaust goes on with continuing American economic assistance and military aid sustaining the Yahya government". Rhode added that rather than wait for a "concert of the great powers," the United States "should act today by ceasing all aid to the Pakistan Military Government".

The Washington Post reported that heavy floods in East Pakistan on Wednesday increased the threat of famine in a region already devastated by an earlier cyclone and the current civil war.