Pakistan on the brink

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 10

Pakistan on the brink

President Yahya Khan’s hopes of keeping Pakistan together look slender. His second postponement of the National Assembly’s opening session—which was to have been held on March 25—suggests that the political gap between East and West is widening. The talks between the President and the two leaders, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in the East, and Mr Zulfikar Bhutto, in the West, produced no apparent agreement on matters of substance. When the President asked Sheikh Mujibur if he would attend a meeting of the Assembly he said he and his Awami League would atterid if four conditions were met. Two of them were the immediate lifting of martial law and the immediate transfer of power to the people’s elected representatives—meaning, in effect, his own party. President Yahya could not accept either condition; martial law, he said, could not be ended until a responsible government existed to take its place. And there can be no government until the constitutional Assembly meets and forms one—with, obviously, Sheikh Mujibur at its head. Mr Bhutto had said that he would attend the Assembly unconditionally. He also indicated that he would concede the greater part of the autonomy demanded by the East, and would be willing to take part in government with the Awami League. He is unlikely to be asked to do so. Furthermore, Sheikh Mujibur’s six points, designed to split Pakistan into two economic and virtually autonomous regions, and to deprive the Federal Government of its taxing powers, would be written into a new Constitution. Such a loose federation would be unworkable, even if the President were disposed to accept it. He is now well aware of the strength of East Bengali nationalism, solidly behind Sheikh Mujibur. East Bengal’s 70 million people are a majority of Pakistan’s entire population. They represent a region, distinct culturally from the West, that qualifies for self-determination. Sheikh Mujibur showed his authority when he rejected the President’s offer of a commission to inquire into the Bengal fighting on the ground that it would be merely a device to mislead his - people. If the political deadlock is not resolved—and there are no signs that it will be—President Yahya may well conclude that the only alternative to civil war, which would almost certainly result from an attempted take-over by the Army, is permanent partition.