পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৭৪৯

এই পাতাটির মুদ্রণ সংশোধন করা প্রয়োজন।

717 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ২৭৬। বাংলাদেশ প্রশ্নে জাতিসংঘের প্রতারণা নিউ এজ ২৫ এপ্রিল, ১৯৭১ NEWAGE, APRIL 25, 1971 US ENVOY'S BLUFF ON BANGLADESH EXPOSED The US Ambassador's bluff has been called. Kenneth Keating struck the headlines in the obliging monopoly Press here a few days ago by declaring that his government did not regard the regent gory happenings in East Bengal as an internal affair of Pakistan. It was a clear attempt to play to the gallery without any basis for it in US official policy. The phrase internal affair is overworked, he said. "This certainly is not a case of internal affair". Keating announced with great aplomb in Bombay on April 15. Hardly four days could pass before this inflated balloon was pricked. The official word came from the State Department putting Keating in his place and reiterating the well known US position. The Department's spokesman in Washington, Robert McCloskey, stated bluntly, in reply to pressmen's questions asking for comment, on Keating's Bombay statement that on April 2 he (McCloskey) had stated that "it was our view that what is going on in Pakistan is an internal matter". And there the matter stood as far as the US Government was concerned, he said. American Tanks in Action The American lobby in India has been trying hard to soften the blow dealt to the people of East Bengal by the US attitude, saying that "in action" the US is not hostile to the freedom fighters. Facts Completely refute this make believe nonsense. The same State Department spokesman, Robert McCloskey, had told pressmen a few days earlier that since 1966-61, US sales of military items to Pakistan-both on commercial and on credit terms-had in fact been running at "just under" ten million dollars annually. Of these 25 per cent, that is about 2.5 million dollars worth of material had been in the form of ammunition. (International Herald Tribune, April 15, 1971) This exposes the earlier lies kept afloat by the US that since its resumption of military supplies to Pakistan in 1966.67 the US had been giving only non-lethal weapons to the military dictatorship in Islamabad. The US had claimed then that supplies consisted predominantly of military personnel carriers and communications equipment. It has now had to acknowledge that the bullets and bombs which have killed lakhs of innocent East Bengalis and continue lo kill over more of them, originated mostly in the US. And (his supply is still being maintained, despite all protests and demands from sections of American opinion and from the governments and peoples of Bangladesh and India. Earlier a despatch in the New York Times from its Washington bureau dated April 11 had acknowledged that the US was continuing to ship to Pakistan ammunition and spare parts for weapons under a programme begun in 1967.