পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/২৫০

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খণ্ড
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 Pakistani President Yahya Khan made a recent one-day trip to Teheran to seek the good offices of Shah Riza Pahlevi in mediating his dispute with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who, Yahya said, has refused to meet with him. Some sources say the U.S. and Russia are already assisting Iran in efforts at mediating the squabble and it is assumed that should Iran fall in its peacemaking role, it will fall to the big powers to try their own mediating efforts.

 Meanwhile, Yahya's government, in seeking to repress the independence struggle of East Pakistan's 75 million Bengalis, has several options, none of them good.

 It can continue its policy of repression, which most foreign observers believe is doomed to fail. It can cause, or be egged into, war with India-a war it almost surely would lose. Or it can about the hopelessness of its quest to refuse Bengali independence, thus discrediting its own army and angering West Pakistan's ethnic minorities. The only good alternative settling peacefully with the rival forces in East Pakistan-is considered by now impossible; too much blood has been spilled, loo much anger has been exposed.

 Observers of the grim scene are speculating that, of all the options, the first is most likely to be followed by Yahya's government. The third is considered least likely. But the second, a war with India which would inflame the entire Asian subcontinent, is a real threat. Such a conflict could involve not only India and Pakistan, but the world powers lined up behind them.

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