In short, U Thant has clearly defined the situation as a threat to the peace and urged the Security Council to consider with the utmost attention and concern the present situation and to reach some agreed conclusions as to measures which might be taken.
As I mentioned in my statement in exercise of the right of reply on 29th September, my Government has expressed its readiness to co-operate with the security Council and has welcomed the proposal for a good offices committee of the Council to help reduce the tension between our two countries. I reiterate that readiness here.
India of course, takes an opposite view. Its Government contends that it is not an India-Pakistan problem. They would believe that everything that has happened has been due to Pakistan's actions only, and that India has been merely a passive victim, burdened with a huge influx of refugees. But what are the facts? The facts about Indian intervention are patent and I have already mentioned them.
The world has heard a lot about East Pakistan in recent months much of what has been said has come from outsiders. Not all of them have to test their statements against realities. Many among them moralize and assume lofty postures. But if I may strike a personal tone, I come from East Pakistan. Unlike the distinguished Foreign Minister of India. I cannot afford the luxury of mis-statements and propaganda. From this Assembly, I will go back to East Pakistan. I have to live and suffer and strive and build among my people there, I do appreciate whatever humane concern, unmixed with sordid political motives, exists anywhere for the people of East Pakistan. At the same time, I deplore that the situation in our homeland has been so distorted in the world's eyes, its causes so misrepresented, the sequence of events so disfigured, that it has been made to appear as if there is a war between East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Let an East Pakistani voice rise from this rostrum reminding the world that the people of East Pakistan and West Pakistan are brethren, joined in an imperishable union, and that when the two undertook together the enterprise of building a federal state, it was an unfettered act of self-determination on the part of each. The people of East Pakistan have not regretted, and do not regret, that choice. True, we have problems relating to regional autonomy, to a distribution of national resources based on justice, to the removal of disparities between the different regions. Which State, which large or multilinguistic or multiracial State, is free from such problems? Let not one such state gloat over the problems of another. We in Pakistan, have undergone a most traumatic experience. We have endured a situation of extremity. We have gone through an ordeal. But through it all, we have realized that the fragmentation and fission of our Statehood, the break-up of our unity is and can be no more a solution for us tan it is for others.
It has been a great misfortune that, in our case, these problems led to a violet upheaval. Why this happened cannot he understood without some basic facts about Pakistan's national existence and its relations with India being kept in mind. But it is fantastic to suppose that the conflict was due to East Pakistan's demand for autonomy being suppressed. Are the people of East Pakistan less than independent in a united Pakistan where they are in a majority, and can dominate the Central Government? A majority has, or can acquire, the power to right wrong and to correct imbalances. It is unthinkable for a majority to want to secede. By definition a demand for secession is a
