A communication from the shippers to Licut. Col. M. Amram Raja at the defense procurement division of the Pakistan Embassy covering the dock receipts for the two ships was sent on May 21.
The defense Department, asked about the shipments last Saturday and again today referred all inquiries to the State Department. Officials appeared to be at a loss for an explanation of the shipments.
State Department sources quoted the Defense Department as saying that no sales or deliveries to Pakistan had been authorized since March 25 and that the equipment aboard the two freighters had been purchased prior to the official prohibition.
Inquiry by Senator Church
But they offered no comment as to why the dockside deliveries and actual shipments had been made after March 25.
The State Department has not yet replied to a letter sent on June 17, by Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, to Secretary of State William P. Rogers requesting information about “certain items of military equipment” being shipped to Pakistan under State Department licenses.
Senator Church who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, advised Mr. Rogers that he understood that the State Department had issued License' No. 19242 for some of this equipment.
A check of the bills of lading of the cargo aboard the Sunderbans showed that this license covered an item described “28 skids parts,” weighing 11,895 pounds. No further description of these items was available.
But another license issued by the State Department for the Sunderban's cargo specified “parts and accessories for military vehicles.” The Sunderbans carries a total of 21 items, according to the dockside delivery listings, identified on these documents only as cases and cartons of “auto parts and accessories,” “skids and parts,” “boxes” and “parts.”
Planes and Parachutes Listed
The dockside delivery listings for the Padma include two entries of “four aircraft” each. 113 parachutes and parts, and auto parts, accessories, skids and “wooden boxes.”
An item described as “crates, bundles and parts” is listed as weighing 14,133 pounds.
The program of military sales to Pakistan, begun in 1967, had been running at nearly $10 million a year, according to Robert J. McCloskey, the State Department spokesman. The United States agreed in that year to sell “nonlethal” equipment to both Pakistan and India, lifting in part the embargo placed on military deliveries after the 1965 Indian- Pakistani war.
