বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ১১২ পরাজয়োম্মুখ যুদ্ধ নিউজ উইক ১৫ নভেম্বর, ১৯৭১ NEWSWEEK, NOVEMBER 15, 1971 THK SUB-CONTINENT: A LOSING BATTLE State occasions are usually made up of platitudes and pleasantries. And when President Nixon greeted India's Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, on the south lawn of the White House last week, he tried to follow the formula, even to the point of expounding on Washington's balmy weather. But Mrs. Gandhi was having none of it. Alluding to Pakistan's repression of its Bengali minority-and the resultant flood of 6 million refugees into India - she told Mr. Nixon that her country was facing "a manmade tragedy of vast proportions." And with India and Pakistan poised on the edge of war, she added. "I have come here looking for a deeper understanding of the situation in our part of the world." But Mrs. Gandhi's search apparently proved fruitless. For the President and the Prime Minster failed to agree on a way to end the crisis between India and Pakistan-or even how to repair the strained relations between Washington and New Delhi. From the beginning, Mrs. Gandhi hoped to persuade Mr. Nixon to put pressure on Pakistan to slop its campaign to crush the Bengali independence movement. As she has done in the past, she argued that only America-which still sends arms to Pakistan and never openly censured Pakistan for its policy toward the Bengalis-has enough influence on the Islamabad government to bring an end to the crisis. But the American response to Mrs. Gandhi, as White House spokesman Ronald Zieglber described it. "didn't break much new ground." And the present U.S. policy of urging India to pull back its troops from the Pakistani borders and lo accept international mediation in the dispute cut little ice with Mrs. Gandhi. "Our people cannot understand." she said in a blunt toast at a White House dinner, "how it is that we who are the victims should be equated with those whose action caused the tragedy. It was. in all, a bitter week for the Indian leader. For even as her mission to America ran aground on the rocks of indifference, the death toll in her homeland rose tragically in the aftermath of a massive cyclone and tidal wave. More than 10,000 people died when the winds and water mauled the low-lying coastline of the Bay of Bengal in the state of Orissa. And officials feared that the destruction of rice crops and the poisoning of river water by dead bodies would drive the toll even higher. Ail Unwinnable War The tragedy along the Bay of Bengal could hardly have come at a worse time for India. For its fragile economy is now near collapse as a result of the burden of caring for the Pakistani refugees. And it faces the threat of a two-front war with an increasingly- restless Pakistani Army. Although the majority of India's troops are massed in the west, the outbreak of conflict is more likely to begin to the east. To assess the military situation in that sector, News week's Senior Editor Amaud de Borchgrave flew last week to East Pakistan and cabled the following report:
