ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড This brings me to one part of the Minister's analysis of the events which led up to this tragedy with which I cannot agree. Very rightly, the Right Hon. Gentleman drew attention to the extra ordinary construction of the State of Pakistan. So far as I am aware, no other State in the world has ever been divided in this way, one part separated from the other by over 1,000 miles. Such a State can be held together only by some strong common impulse, That strong common impulse was there in 1947 and was represented by the Muslim faith. The truth now, after the 20 years or so which have elapsed since then, is that common impulse has weakened and no new bonds of common purpose have been forged to take its place. A State of this kind cannot be held together unless there is a will in both areas to keep it as one. That will, it seems to me, has been broken and is unlikely to arise again. The point in the Right Hon. Gentleman's account at which he lost my assent and sympathy came when he told us of how negotiations had gone on. He said that President Yahya Khan had been interested at one stage in carrying out a transfer of power to a civilian democracy, and that is what he had wanted to do. Perhaps that is so. But at the very moment when that democracy emerged, the very moment when it appeared to have a will different from his own, he smashed it. That is his crime, his offence. He broke it. He could not stand the result and implication of what the people themselves wanted. It was as though, on 18" June last year, as we watched the numbers changing, we decided that we did not like the results of the General Election and called out the troops to make sure that the Right Hon. Gentleman did not have his present place on the Government Front Bench. That is a crime, a crime against democracy. Let us state it clearly. I do not want to decide, any more than the Right Hon. Gentleman does, the future of that country, and whether it is to be two or one. What I want is that the people should decide, but they have been deprived of that right of decision by the action, the brutal action, of the Pakistan Army. Having said that—I am amazed at my own moderation, for it is a horrible sequence of events which has taken place-I turn for a moment to consider the aims of our policy and what we can do. I fully understand what the Minister said about the use of our aid programmes, and I see the implications of his remarks. While accepting that aid programmes must not, as it were, simply be carried along by political judgments, he is saying that there can be no possibility of aid being resumed while the political infrastructure, as the Right Hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) pointed out, makes any kind of serious economic aid impossible to support. That must be so, and it is right that the Pakistan Government should understand it. As regards sending in aid for relief purposes, I agree that we must mobilize all the agencies and forces available to us. I warmly support the initiative taken with the United Nations, and I very much hope that it will succeed. I also attach enormous importance-as, I believe, do the Right Hon. Member for Stafford and Stone and my Right Hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Michael
