is led by the Awami League. This party, which won a national majority in last December’s general elections, was outlawed by the military regime when the army struck on March 25.
The military repression has sent millions of East Pakistani refugees fleeing India.
Mrs. Gandhi was asked if she left there was a breaking point to the economic and social pressures placed on India by the refugees, a point beyond which India might feel compelled to take military action against Pakistan to halt the influx.
“Well, actually, I would say, we have already reached it”, she replied. “But this does not mean that we are going to crack under it”.
“We certainly want a quick solution, but we do not want to do anything which creates greater problems”, she went on. “As you know, we have been extremely restrained. I cannot, even by giving deep thought to the matter, think of a single country who would have shown such restraint and patience in the face of such grave provocation”.
During the last few weeks, both countries have reinforced their troops on their long eastern and western borders, and the Press on both sides has carried reports raising the spectre of another was between India and Pakistan. They last fought in 1965 over Kashmir.
Still, though Mrs. Gandhi called the situation grave, she indicated no change as yet in her plans to leave on a three week foreign tour starting next Sunday, during which she is scheduled to visit six western capitals including London and Washington.
The Prime Minister was critical of United States policy on the East Pakistan crisis, saying that the Americans “do not take a very long-range view”.
“Propping up the Pakistani military regime in Bangladesh”, she said, “is not necessarily strengthening Pakistan in any way”.
Mrs. Gandhi was referring to the Nixon Administration's continuation of some arms shipments to Pakistan, and its unwillingness to criticise the Pakistani Government publicity.
We have the greatest friendship for America and the American people", she said, “but one of the reasons (for deteriorating relations) so far as the Indian public is concerned, is this idea that the United States has of always balancing India and Pakistan”.
On American arms for Pakistan, she said, “I do not know what the quantum is now, but in the past they have been supplied to Pakistan in large quantities. They have been used only against India, not at all against communism or any other of the things that had been said to us and which we had pointed out then were most unlikely”.
“In this matter”, she continued, “we certainly have had a far more understanding approach from the Soviet Union than we have from the United States”.
