555 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড The solutions proposed by the editorial in the Observer bear some similarity to those put forward by the Sunday Times but ascribe a bigger role to the United Nations. The Observer says that two complementary courses of action are possible. First Pakistan should be warned that her foreign aid might be suspended until it is agreed by a United Nations Observer that it is safe for the refugees to return home. Second the paper proposes that the Security Council should adopt a resolution allowing a UN mission to move between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh to negotiate between them as the Jarring Mission has done in the Middle East. The Observer stresses that its solution is not intended to solve the question of East Bengal's political future but only 'to get the four million refugees back and to defuse the India Pakistan tension'. Ե THE WEEKLIES ON PAKISTAN 16th July, 1971 Edited by William Crawley The New Statesmen this week prints an article by Mr. Reg Prentice, who was a member of the four-man British Parliamentary delegation which recently visited both Pakistan and India to study the present crisis. Mr. Prentice said that the delegation had an assurance from President Yahya Khan that they could go where they liked, and that nowhere had been refused them. However they found that they were mostly listening to the official point of view and they found their informants reluctant to answer questions. They had seen the symptoms of a country in the grip of fear. The reason for this fear, Mr. Prentice says, was apparent from the number of confidential statements made to members of the delegation by a wide variety of people. Such confidences showed, Mr. Prentice writes, that the army had committed widespread violence and killing in March and April, and that it still continued. The economic and social life of the country is at a very low ebb, writes Mr. Prentice. Most of the workers, who have fled to the villages, are not yet going back to the towns. The delegation were originally told by the Pakistan authorities that no refugees had fled to India, but during their visit the authorities admitted that there were some. The Pakistani authorities claimed that the maximum number of refugees was 1.2 million, and said that they were being prevented from returning home by the Indians. However Mr. Prentice said that they could not accept the Pakistani version when they saw the reality of the refugee situation on the Indian side of the border. They had spent two days visiting the refugee camps and had questioned the refugees at random. The refugees had said that they wanted to return but only when it was safe to do so. Mr. Prentice writes of the enormous problem of providing for the refugees, and asks how long it will be before serious tensions develop between the refugees and the local population. Mr. Prentice says that further tragedy for both India and Pakistan can only be prevented by a political settlement acceptable to the people of East Bengal. The Economist correspondent in India examines the pressures that are building up in the Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Gandhi to take action in East Pakistan. The Bangladesh
