Bhutto plans to free Mujibur

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32801, 29 December 1971, Page 13

Bhutto plans to free Mujibur

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, December 28. President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan has said that he was working out details for the release of the Awami League leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Pakistan Radio said today.

The radio, monitored in London, said at the end ot its news bulletin that the President made the statement after a meeting yesterday with the detained East Pakistan leader.

' It gave no further details on moves to free Sheikh Mujibur, reported under house arrest after being recently released from prison. But the broadcast quoted the President as saying that their talks would continue. The radio said that President Bhutto expressed the hope that foreign Powers would note that the talks had begun and that they would

refrain from any premature recognition of the self-pro-claimed State of Bangla Desh. Polls annulled

In another broadcast, Radio Pakistan said that President Bhutto had issued an order annulling national and provincial Assembly byelections recently held in East Pakistan.

Sheikh Mujibur, whose Awami League won all but two seats in East Pakistan elections last December, was arrested in March and taken to West Pakistan. He was later declared President by the Bangla Dpsh Government, which has now been recognised by India. A Dacca report said that the Bangla Desh Government was to take over all commercial enterprises whose owners have left the counter or cannot be immediately traced. An official announcement said that in the interests of the economy it was essentia] that industrial concerns, commercial firms and insurance companies should begin work as soon as possible. The Commerce Ministry would take over the running of those firms whose owners or top management had left the country or could not be found.

This will clearly apply mostly to West Pakistanis or those who collaborated with them during the nine-month “liberation struggle.” It was also announced that the former State Bank of Pakistan, now known as the Bangla Desh Bank, would as-

sume the functions of a central bank. Commercial banks are to open on January 1.. The Red Cross Society of China yesterday made an international appeal to condemn, investigate and stop Indian forces “massacring Pakistani people,” according to the New China News Agency. A message sent to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, the Chinese Red Cross Society said: “The barbarous outrages perpetrated by the Indian occupant forces in East Pakistan and the local armed forces against innocent’ inhabitants in the Eastern part of Pakistan not only flagrantly contravene the principle of humanitarianism and the December 21, 1971, resolution of the United Nations Security Council but also crudely trample upon the 1949 Geneva Conventions to Which the Indian Government is a party.

“We appeal to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the League of Red Cross Societies and the National Red Cross, Red Crescent and Lion and Sun Societies of various countries, which are duty bound to uphold the principle of humanitarianism, to take immediate action, condemn the Indian forces for their sanguinary atrocities of massacring Pakistani people, undertake impartial investigation into these outrages and demand that the Indian Government immeditaely stop these outrages?’