For three days. State Department spokesmen and newsmen argued over the official claim that ammunition was not a “lethal” item. This stemmed from an earlier State Department admission that the military sales to Pakistan, confined to “nonlethal” items, included ammunition.
On the third, day, a reporter asked: “When does ammunition become lethal 7” The Suite Department spokesmen replied: “This is a theological question."
Left unclear was the essence of United States policy toward the East Pakistani crisis against the background of what is recognized here as a very real threat of warfare between India and Pakistan unless a political solution is promptly found for the autonomy aspirations of the easterners.
This threat emanates from the severe strain that the refugee army has placed on India's resources, the mounting frictions between the refugees and the local Indian population and India's fear of political radicalization of the East Pakistan “freedom fighters.” All these factors are seen by now Delhi as a direct menace to the political stability of the Indian state of West Bengal and to peace in the subcontinent.
Indian policy, strongly supported by Britain and Canada, is to bring enough international pressure to bear on President Yahya Khan to grant East Pakistan its demands for autonomy. India argues that this must be done if conditions are to he restored in East Pakistan for the return of the refugees. She insists that foreign economic aid must be denied Pakistan as an instrument of pressure.
The attitude of the United States on this point is ambiguous. The Administration's instincts, particularly at the Pentagon, are that reasonably good relations with Pakistan must be maintained at all costs so as to compensate for the close ties between India and the Soviet Union. This view is maintained even though Pakistan in recent years has drawn close to Communist China.
Although the State Department publicly counseled Pakistan carlier this month to seek “political accommodation” with the easterners-the first time it had done so after two months of bloody fighting-it rejects the argument that economic pressure should be applied.
However, a mission from the World Bank recommended last week, following a survey of the Pakistani situation, that 110 new funds be supplied by the international aid- to-Pakistan consortium until the Islamabad regime had turned to “political accommodation” in the East.
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