wrote for South Asian Review later that year to put my knowledge, whilst still fresh, on the record. Dr. Kamal Hossain has separately given his own more authoritative version on the negotiation.
The negotiations were themselves going on against a progressively mounting environment of tension, created by the daily reinforcement of the Pakistani garrisons in Bangladesh and the growing political consciousness and militancy of the Bengali masses. Around the third week of March, a friend of ours, Muycedul Ilasan, told me he had an urgent message to deliver to Bangabandhu from sources within the Cantonment. He did not reveal this at the time but later told me that the source was Air vice Marshall Khondkar who was then a Group Captain in the Pakistan Air l'orce. I took Muyeed to Bangabandhu's residence at around 10 p.m. one night where he passed on the message that the Pakistan army was preparing to strike and was going into a state of combat readiness. Bangabandhu took note of this but said that he was already informed of these preparations.
During the period of the negotiation, I had occasion to meet with some of the National Awami Party (NAP) leaders from West Pakistan. If I recollect Abdul Wali Khan of NWFP and Ghous Bux Bizenjo of Baluchistan were staying with Ahmedul Kabir, the proprietor of Daily Sangbad. Both Wali Khan and Bizenjo conveyed their apprehensions to me that the talks between Yahya, Mujib and Bhutto were likely to override the interests of the smaller provinces of West Pakistan. The Pathan and Baluchi apprehension arose from the fact that Bhutto was in these discussions demanding a free hand in West Pakistan on the strength of his electoral majorities in Panjab and Sind. As a counterpoint to autonomy demanded by Mujib for the east wing. Bhutto wanted be chief executive for all of West Pakistan rather than just Panjab of Sind. Since the Peoples Party had been defeated at the polls in both NWFP and Baluchistan, Bhutto feared that the Awami League majority in the parliament would side with the Pathans and Baluch to completely exclude the Peoples Party from power in the Centre and would push through autonomy for the provinces Pakistan which could emancipate them from Panjabi hegemony. The NAP leaders feared that in order to get a free band in the East wing Mujib would be persuaded to cede a free hand to Bhutto, at the expense of autonomy for the smaller regions of West Pakistan. As it turned our however, their apprehensions about the role of Mujib turns out to be academic. But the fear of losing out their autonomy to a Panjabi dominated West Pakistan, first under Bhutto and now the Pakistan Army: appear to have been fully justified by the passage of events.
I had some insight into the duplicity of the Pakistani Generals who, it appears. were conducting the negotiations to buy time to reinforce their garrisons in Bangladesh. On 24th March the NAP leaders and other political figures from the smaller West Pakistani partics left Dhaka. They indicated that they had been advised to do so by Yahya and that army action was imminent.
On the evening of 25th March, around 5-6 p.m. I took Mazhar Ali Khan, the father of Tariq Ali and a distinguished journalist in his right, who used to write a column for forum, to meet Bangabandhu at Road 32. At that time the house was besieged by
