but the entire West-there is an effort always to cquatc India and Pakistan. Now, whether this will help Pakistan or not I can’t say.
Mr. Rosenthal: Madam Prime Minister. I think the biggest question on anybody’s mind is the danger of war between India and Pakistan. What is your assessment about how close the danger is, now?
Prime Minister: it is very difficult to say. We have been drawing the world’s attention to this question, because we knew that it might escalate to this when the refugees started pouring in and really chaotic conditions began in East Bengal.
Now of course, the threat is not merely in the East, but the armies are drawn up facing each other on our Western borders as well.
India has always been against war, and we feel deeply on the subject of world peace. We have stood for total disarmament in all world forums, but we just don’t know what to do in these circumstances. The Pakistan Army was brought up on the Western border a full week or ten days before we made any move. But we found that did not agitate the world conscience, and the reply the Pakistanis gave to the U.N. observer who drew their attention to this move was that they were merely doing exercises, or for training purposes.
Now, obviously this was not a very believable reply, and therefore we were forced to move up our troops also, and this is where the situation is today.
Mr. Rosenthal: Well, if you have troops on either side in such power, very often there is a danger of an accidental war, a war the people don't really plan. There are some people who feel that it would be beneficial in avoiding accidental war to have more U.N. observers of some kind on either side. I know you haven’t been enthusiastic about this and I wonder if you would tell us why.
Prime Minister: Now, there are two parts of the question, because there are U.N. observes on the western border under the cease-fire agreement with Pakistan over Kashmir you know, so I don’t think the proposal, today, is to have more U.N. observers on that frontier. The proposal is to have them on the eastern border. Now there also we have about ten observers or representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Mr. Sadruddin, who is the Commissioner for this, has either arrived in India or is due to arrive in a day or two. We don’t object to more people because you know we have a very open society-some people think too open. Your press correspondents radio people, television people, have been on the border in the camps, across the border so have newspaper people, parliamentary delegations. diplomats from many different countries of Asia, Europe and Americas been to this area; so we are not hiding anything. But we do feel strongly that at this moment so useful purpose will be served by more people going. Ten are already there as I told you.
The first step is to have more peaceful conditions within East Bengal which would prevent a further influx of refugees, because more refugees are coming in every single day. So that is the first step. Now, to say they are going to which the situation from our
