পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৫৪

ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড institutions must act together. We are therefore hoping that a consortium meeting on Pakistan will before long be arranged, at which it may be possible to reach decisions on further aid. When she intervened on Tuesday the Right Hon. Lady the Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) mentioned the inequality between East and West Pakistan. The Hon. Gentleman referred to this matter this morning. We and the other members of the consortium are very conscious of this and we had been laying plans long before these tragic events took place to spend the greater part of our aid in East Pakistan. It is not only we who reached this conclusion. When I was in Islamabad before I set foot in East Pakistan 1st November, I was made perfectly well aware of the intention of the Pakistan Government that the imbalance that had created in the past, and which they recognize, should be redressed in the future. I remember that the phrase that was continually put before me was-"the necessary transfer of resources from West to East". Therefore, this is not something which we have thought up on our own; it has the support of the Pakistan Government. Our aid was to be directed particularly, as the Right Hon. Lady knows, into the Action Programme for Water and Agriculture Development which the World Bank had prepared last July. This is, as the Right Hon. Lady well knows, a very large and ambitious programme for irrigation and flood control throughout the country of a kind which is bound to be needed as a basis for any economic development. After I returned from East Pakistan last autumn, we went some way in agreeing with the Pakistan Government what from our own British contribution to the Action Programme should take. We discussed various possibilities. Some were getting under way; but as the House will be well aware, all this has now come to a halt. Our experts and consultants have had to be withdrawn from East Pakistan and the supply of British goods under out loans has been interrupted. Hon. Members may have seen that the Export Credits Guarantee Department has been obliged to cease covering further export transactions to Pakistan. I am told that this is a step which has been taken with the greatest reluctance, but, given the Department's obligations to operate on a self-supporting basis, it is inevitable in the light of present economic conditions in Pakistan. Not only has the internal business of the country been disrupted by the disturbances but, much more serious, future export earnings are likely to be severely reduced. All this, coming on top of the strain of the earlier floods on an already delicate economy, must raise the gravest doubts about Pakistan's ability to continue to service her existing burden of foreign debt. This existing economic difficulty which I have mentioned brings into focus a controversy which is likely to loom large in this debate. Her Majesty's Government are anxious, as I hope that I have already made clear, to resume, when it can be resumed, development aid to Pakistan. The Hon. Gentleman argued, as no doubt other Hon. Members will argue during the debate, that we should give no further aid to Pakistan unless President Yahya Khan agrees to certain specific action. Although aid may play apart in a general solution of problems. I profoundly disagree that it can be used as a lever to enforce a particular solution which observers here, thousands of miles from Dacca or Islamabad, with knowledge that must be incomplete, may wrongly think will contribute to peace.