পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৮১৫

783 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড displeasure of aid giving countries with West Pakistan than a physical consequences of the chaos prevailing in East Bengal. As soon as the army's conflict with the Awami League began, life became too insecure for foreign governments to be sure about the safety of their nation's working on these projects. All foreign staff were therefore gradually pulled out and it is believed unlikely that they will feel sale enough to go back there for some time to come. In the meantime, the aid meant for these projects will remain suspended. Beyond that and despite the whispered assurance dropped into waiting Indian ears there is no known denial of foreign aid yet; in fact soon after the fighting the Russians made it known that they were sticking to their agreement to build a steel mill near Karachi. The picture may become a little clearer when the aid consortium for Pakistan meets in August; before that here might be only a glimpse of their attitude when the same countries meet as the aid India consortium, in July. But one obvious thing can be safely said: that by and large the other members of the consortium will take their cue in this matter from Britain and the United States and if the current political attitude of these two countries is any indication of what their future economic policy will be, then India should not expect too much in that quarter. The public and the authorities in both countries have been fully exposed to the gruesomeness of what has happened in East Bengal. The British and American Press has been remarkably frank; even those correspondents have been who were taken on a conducted tour through whitewashed scenes of the recent savagery. Their coverage has won praise from people in New Delhi who are not normally given to paying compliments to the Western Press. But even then official comment in Washington as well as London remains careful not to hurt anyone's feelings in Islamabad, which only shows how hard they are on their idea that an anchorage in Pakistan, which mostly means West Pakistan to them, is very important for them, in their own interests. The best example of the contemporary Anglo-American attitude was provided by the British Government on May 25, While it was stated in the House of Commons that day that a special envoy of President Yahya Khan had been told of Britain's concern over the "East Bengal situation" (whether the situation means the refugee exodus or the military terror or the suppression of the popular will was left carefully vague) it was also slated that Britain had welcomed the envoy's emphasis upon President Yahya Khan's "determination to seek an early political solution to Pakistan's internal political difficulties". In other words President Yahya Khan can decide for himself what would be the best "solution" for what his envoy euphemistically described as "internal difficulties. Only a few days earlier Yahya Khan himself had made it abundantly clear that in his solution there would be no room for the Awami League though it had proved itself to be synonymous with the people of East Bengal. One of Yahya Khan's resounding declarations was that we will deal "with Mujibur Rahman as we see fairly another that there would never be any negotiations with the Awami League; and yet another that he was determined to punish those Awami League leaders who had "committed crimes" and since he also said that Mujib had plotted to arrest him, the President of the country, he clearly implied that Mujib could also be treated as having committed a crime and dealt with accordingly. He did hold out the carrot that Awami League members of the National Assembly would be treated as having been elected as individuals, not as candidates of the League: therefore the ban on the League would not necessarily be extended to them as well and those who were considered to have been sufficiently reformed by their experiences since March 25 might be accommodated in the "political solution." But other