East Pakistan will eventually become independent: Kissinger
June 3, 1971
'GIVE THE FACTS TIME TO ASSERT THEMSELVES'
A conversation was held on June 3, 1971 between US Ambassador to India Kenneth Keating, Assistant to the US President Henry Kissinger and NSC staff Harold Saunders about the situation of East Pakistan. Kissinger said he thought it would be useful to explain the president's views on what has happened in South Asia. He felt that it was "premature to move on the Paks".
"We certainly will use our influence to do whatever we can to help solve the current humanitarian problems. But the President has felt that we should give President Yahya a few months to see what he can work out. As the President sees it, if we approach the Pakistanis emotionally now, we would not gain anything and we might lose what ability we may have to influence the situation," said Kissinger.
"Our judgment," Dr Kissinger continued, " is that East Pakistan will eventually become independent."
This, he felt, was the ambassador's judgment too. The problem was "how to bell the cat". The president chose to do it gradually, informed Kissinger.
In all honesty, Kissinger pointed out, President Richard Nixon had a special feeling for President Yahya Khan. One couldn't make policy on that basis, but it was a fact of life.
Kissinger said one of the president's main concerns was that India be discouraged from military action. Just to give the ambassador the flavour of the president's feelings, he recalled that 10 days ago when we had received reports that India might be considering military action the president had said he would cut off economic assistance if India moved.
"But we don't have to think in those extreme terms. The Pakistanis are already up against a very difficult situation, and our policy is to give the facts time to assert themselves," said Kissinger.
CHOLERA TOLL AMONG BANGALEES PUT AT 2,000
Indian officials reported today that at least 2,000 refugees from East Pakistan had died of cholera in an epidemic that had been raging for a week in their teeming border camps.
Unofficial figures put the toll much higher among the Bangalee refugees, more than four million of whom fled to India to escape the Pakistani army, which since March 25 had been trying to crush the Bangalee independence movement in East Pakistan.
Government officials acknowledged that accurate death figures were impossible to keep under such chaotic conditions. They described the situation as "a grave crisis" and "absolutely impossible".
Speaking of the toll, KK Das, the minister of health, said the epidemic was just beginning and that the deaths could easily increase to 40,000 or 50,000 in a matter of days.
Das, in an interview in his office, expressed alarm that large numbers of refugees, in panic and because of overcrowded conditions in border camps, were drifting closer to Calcutta.
"God knows what would happen if the epidemic spread to Calcutta," he said.
Calcutta, an overcrowded city of eight million people, was already India's worst cholera center -- suffering from a shortage of drinking water and a sewage system that frequently consists of little more than stagnant open ditches.
BANGLADESH YOUTH CAMP OPENED
A camp of Bangladeshi students and youths was opened in Calcutta today by Dr Azizur Rahman Mallick, vice-chancellor of Chittagong University. About 70 college and university boys and girls enrolled themselves in the camp.
Shamsuddoza Sajen is a journalist and researcher. He can be contacted at [email protected]
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