Security council. Our programme was designed to coincide with the debate on the General Assembly. There were two panels, one was made up of American. If I remember this included Tom Dine, Arnold de Borchgrave of Newsweek Magazine and one other well known personality. They were followed by what was meant to be a three-countered discussion between the Counsel-General for Pakistan in New York, Najmus Sakib Khan, the Council-General for India, and myself speaking for Bangladesh. The Pakistan Council General was instructed to decline to appear on the same platform with me so that he and his Indian counterpart went on the screen together ahead of me. Thus when I come on screen it turned out to be a solo appearance. By a strange coincidence, I come on just as the counting of the vote at the General Assembly was being announced. Just as I had launched myself into my statement the cameras switched from the studio to the General Assembly to report on the massive vote there in favor of an immediate cease fire and withdrawal of forces across national boundaries. The cameras than switched back to me and the interviewer invited me to give an instant reaction to what was clearly an event, which did no service to the cause of a liberated Bangladesh. To my recollection, I had to improvise very rapidly and state that 'Bangladesh which was the centre of this war as a result of the genocidal action of the Pakistan army, was not invited to participate in this debate in the General Assembly. The people and government of Bangladesh were therefore not party to these resolutions and would continue our war of liberation until such as the Pakistan aggression on the people of Bangladesh had been defeated'. My statement and subsequent observations on the situation arising out of the U.N.debatc and situation in Bangladesh appeared to be well received. For days after that I was stopped on the streets of New York by strangers who had heard my speech on the subject and complimented for my forthright statement.
The role of TV celebrity was however ephemeral. The real drama was going on in Bangladesh and more peripherally in the United Nations. We had learnt that Mr.Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Who had at the eleventh hour inducted into government by Yahya Khan, was coming to New York to argue the Pakistan case before the Security Council. However Bhutto's flight to New York was being overtaking by events on the ground in Bangladesh. The spectacular advance of the Indian and Bangladesh forces and the imminent collapse of Pakistani defenses, were setting their own seal on the debate in the U. N. From a Bengali cypher clerk, who had on instructions stayed on the Pakistan U.N. Mission, we learnt that top secret ciphers had come in resporting that General Niazi had sought permission to surrender to the advancing forces. We also learnt that Paul Mare Henri the U.N. representative in Dhaka had relayed a message from Rao Farman Ali to the Secretary General seeking his good offices in securing a surrender which guaranteed the safe withdrawal of Pakistani forces from Bangladesh.
Bhutto was greeted at the airport with this, for him, alarming piece of news. His promised coup de theatre in the Security Council was thus immediately in danger of being upstages. Being quite unprepared for this thus development for this development Bhutto went to ground and spent the next few days in close confabulation with the United States Representative to the U.N.George Bush,now Vice-President in the Reagan administration and with the newly designated Chinese representative to the U.N., Huan Huang. It is not clear what was discussed by them in conclaves but for a while we heard no more of talks of
