বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড
on the $7.5 million allocation and over $100 million in US-owned Pakistani currency made available by Congress for rehabilitation projects. We can move forward with an agreement to provide a further 150,000 tons of food grains for rehabilitation in the cyclone disaster area. We have also held in readiness a further 170,000 tons of wheat, the balance from an earlier agreement for East Pakistan as a whole, to be shipped as soon as port and distribution facilities permit.
Large numbers of refugees have gone to India from East Pakistan. The Government of India has already requested international assistance and he sought bilateral assistance from several countries to supplement its own very considerable efforts to help the refugees. We have taken the lead in supporting the international relief effort which is being organized by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. We have been working closely with the World Food Program which will also be cooperating with the UN High Commissioner in the relief effort.
As soon as the refugee flow became substantial, we began a program of feeding the steadily growing number of refugees through US voluntary agencies in India. By the end of this week, we anticipate that CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Church World Service and the Lutheran World Federation will be Feeding as many as 300,000 refugees using PL-480 Title II food. For this and other relief purposes we have authorized up to $2.5 million in food and other assistance as our initial contribution to enable urgent relief activities to get under way while the international relief effort is being organized. A UNHCR team is currently in India assessing relief needs. We will consider what types of additional contributions we might make when this team has reported its findings.
