ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড that led up in a constitutional sense to the appalling tragedies that we have been witnessing. Sheikh Mujib himself agreed to a legal framework before the elections were held. It was the framework which he and the Awami League accepted unanimously and without question as the basis on which they would fight the election. I shall quote only one sentence from that framework: "The Federal Government shall have adequate powers, including legislative, administrative and financial powers, to discharge its responsibility in relation to external and internal affairs and to preserve the independence and territorial integrity of the whole country.” Sheikh Mujib's party having won a decisive victory at the election, I should like to mention one or two of the points in the programme which he then put forward. On a national currency, he said that there might be two freely convertible separate currencies, or possibly one currency for the whole could be maintained. That is not very serious. A separate banking preserve was to be made for East Pakistan. There was to be a separate fiscal and monetary policy for East Pakistan. On taxation, the federating state should have exclusive authority to levy all taxes and duties within the area. The Federal Government would have no tax levying authority. In regard to external trade, everything to do with it including drawing up trade treaties and the maintenance of overseas trade missions was to be in separate hands. Does that really accord with the legal framework for maintaining the integrity of the country? Could any sovereign state accept that as forming the foundation of a separate State? That list shows the compelling reasons why, when these points were put forward, General Yahya and his advisers decided that the legal framework upon which the elections had been fought had been abandoned. Although it has been said that he made no attempt, even then, to reach agreement, I was glad that my Right Hon. Friend paid tribute to the serious way in which he tried to reach a compromise. When Sheikh Mujib refused to go to the Federal capital to discuss matters, General Yahya flew to Dacca to try to persuade him on the spot to co-operate. No head of State could have gone further. Instead of summoning Sheikh Mujib to the capital, he made two separate lights to East Pakistan. It was only when he became convinced that there was no intention to maintain the unity of the State, on which the elections had been fought by mutual agreement, that the war broke out. Mr. Julius Silverman (Birmingham, Aston): But did not Sheikh Mujib succeed in getting not only an overwhelming majority of the people of East Pakistan to support him, but also an overall majority in the whole Legislative Assembly? Sir F. Bennett: I think that that intervention shows how unwise it is to give way to an Hon. Member when one is making a reasoned case. I did not say that. I said that Sheikh Mujib fought the election on a previously agreed legal framework to which he showed subsequently that he was not prepared to adhere. He won the election in his half of the country decisively, and it is true, because there are more voters in East Pakistan, that he had a majority in the whole of Pakistan. But the situation cannot be compared with similar circumstances in the United Kingdom. The Awami League did not win one single seat in the whole of West Pakistan, and the only way that the country could be kept together was
