910 ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড time is a matter for India to consider. At this stage, it should be India's endeavour to get Bangladesh as one of the recognized parties to the dispute. In fact, that is the appropriate way to win international recognition for Bangladesh. It should be made clear that the cease-fire cannot be signed in the Bengal sector unless the Bangladesh Commander is recognized as an independent sector commander for the purposes of cease-fire, and the Bangladesh Government is recognized as a party to the dispute as a whole." The paper from which that quotation was an excerpt was fully reported in The Times of London on 13th July. Again, there is no room for doubt that this thinking was consistent with official policy. In October, Mr. Jagjivan Ram, the Indian Defense Minister-and I apologize for quoting him and again and again, but though his volubility furnishes some useful material it cannot be supposed that he does not express the thinking of the Government of which he is a prominent member-stated that any war with Pakistan would be fought on its soil and India would not vacate the territory occupied during the conflict. He added, "We shall go right up to Lahore and Sialkot and shall not come back whatever be the consequences". It is thus clear that it was India's belligerence which gave a dimension to Pakistan's internal crisis that it would never have had otherwise. To say this is not to make light of our domestic situation. The crisis we have faced this year has been a supreme tragedy for our country. But may I not ask this: have not other nationsnations which are models of cohesion now-gone through similar traumatic experiences in the past? One difference is that they escaped the distortions of international publicity to which Pakistan has been a victim. Another and much greater differences that they did not have a hostile and bigger neighbor that had first fomented their civil strife and exacerbated it and then committed aggression, as India has done in our case. The Secretary-General rightly pointed out in his memorandum of 20th July, to the President of the Security Council that—
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the crisis is unfolding in the context of the long-standing and unresolved differences between India and Pakistan-differences which gave rise to open warfare only six year ago". The India-Pakistan question has been on the agenda of the Security Council since 1948. The outstanding dispute between the two countries relating to the disposition of the State of Jammu and Kashmir is one which has been discussed at more than a hundred meetings of the Security Council and has been the subject of as many as 22 resolutions and two statement of consensus of the Security Council. Let me make it clear that there will never be real peace between India and Pakistan and I use the word peace in the sense of something more than an absence of fighting-unless this dispute is resolved in accordance not with India's or Pakistan's wishes, not with the interests of any foreign power or group of powers, but with the Will of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. An international agreement exists-concluded under the auspices of the United Nations-that the disposition of the State should be determined by an impartial plebiscite under the
