Strategic
Privately, U.S. diplomats concede that, above all else. Washington is trying to maintain good relations with Pakistan out of strategic considerations. One diplomat wamed against the end of an American influence on Pakistan. “Our influence has vanished” he argued, “the area could become a playground for the Soviet Union and china.” Added a colleague with startling bluntness: “We are more interested in stability than morality at the moment ...Right now the chance for Stability, slim as it is seems to lie with Yahya".
Yet, the price of a cold geopolitical approach, to the problem may itself prove to be unacceptable in the end. For one thing. Washington's calculated reluctance to bring added pressures on Islamabad by openly cutting off aid put it at odds with the World Bank and the other members of an eleven-nation consortium, all of whom have deferred development programs in Pakistan until the government in Islamabad works out a “political accommodation” with the eastern region. (Even the World Bank, however, has not been able to escape the controversy swirling around Pakistan, after World Bank President Robert McNamara tried to suppress a critical report drafted by a team of investigators who recently visited Pakistan. The New York Times got hold of the documents and splashed it on its front page). Subsequently McNamara sent a letter to the Pakistani Government apologizing for the news leak.
Moreover, Washington's equivocation has already enraged India, where most officials are convinced that Yahya could not continue his policy of repression without outside help. “Supply of arms to Pakistan by any country in the present context amounts to condoning genocide in Bangladesh,” charges India's Foreign Minister Swaran Singh. “It could have an impact on Indo-U.S. bilateral relations as well". Thus rightly or wrongly, the Administration's pragmatic stand on the Pakistani question has promoted an impression of official U.S. indifference to the human agony of a strife-torn-land-an impression that is at odds with the traditional image of a concerned and compassionate America.
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