PROPOSALS BY PAKISTAN

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25303, 1 October 1947, Page 7

PROPOSALS BY PAKISTAN

“Military Aid Not Requested” INDIA OPPOSED TO APPEAL TO U.N. (N.Z. Press Association— Copyright) (Rec. 7 p m.) LONDON, Sept. 29. “No request for military aid was contained in the Pakistan request to the British Commonwealth," says Reuters diplomatic correspondent. “Pakistan has asked the other Commonwealth Governments to consider ways and means of ending the disorders in the whole of the Indian sub-contin-ent. It is believed that Pakistan feels that an examination by the rest of the Commonwealth might ease the situation.

In Karachi to-day a Pakistan Government spokesman said the Indian Government had rejected the Pakistan proposal that the two Governments should jointly appeal to the United Nations for neutral observers to be flown to India to report on the communal rioting. Reuters correspondent says: “It is learned authoritatively that India, while not favouring the Pakistan suggestion that the two Dominions should ask the United Nations to provide observers of the communal rioting, is ready to welcome the appointment of any body of impartial observers from India and Pakistan. “The Indian point of view is that outside observers, through unfamiliarity with conditions and languages, would not be likely to be able to offer effective assistance.

“India has proposed to Pakistan that the Governments of East and West Punjab should meet twice a week to discuss means of co-operating and stopping disorders."

Resettlement of Refugees “About 600,000 Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan’s West Punjab have so far settled on 700,000 acres of land in the Indian Dominion territory of East Punjab,”, said an Eastern Punjab spokesman. He added that the East Punjab Government was working on the assumption that all the 4.500,000 Moslems in East Punjab and the 4.000,000 Hindus and Sikhs in West Punjab would ultimately be involved in the transfer of populations. It was estimated that Moslems were leaving in East Punjab 2,500.000 acres .of cultivated land, while Hindus and Sikhs in. West Punjab were leaving 3,300,000 acres. The spokesman said that the big problem before the Government was

to settle the agricultural population from the West Punjab on an area about 60 per cent, of that which had been occupied by them. A military spokesman said that the movement of columns of refugees between the East and West Punjab, which the heavy rains of the last few days had crocked had now been resumed.

An official spokesman said that the peak of the killing had been passed m the East and West Punjab. The

Governments were now faced with the twin problems of organising orderly evacuation and the rehabilitation of the refugees. The correspondent of the Associated Press says that the announcement was made as rain and heavy piled new miseries on the refugees on both sides of the border. In Lahore to-day the West Punjab Ministry of Refugees announced that the earlier estimate of 1200 Moslem refugees killed the Amritsar train massacre on September 22 was incorrect. “Not less than 2000 Moslems were killed,” said the Ministry.