forces to secure a rapid surrender of the Pakistan army. This had been imminent around 10 December but had at the last minute been countermanded on orders from Islamabad in order to buy the outside maneuvers to be players go be played out. When I left New York for London on my way home, the atmosphere was surcharged with high tension. The possibility of new dimension to the war being opened up by the us. seventh Fleet was no longer in the realm of fantasy.
I was in Oxford when we heard the exhilarating news of the surrender of the Pakistan army and witnessed on television the spectacle niazi down his arms Before Lt. general singh Aurora at the Dhaka Race Coutse. It is as yet unrevealed whether the u.s Seventh fleet would have intervened had the armics of Gcn. Niazi held out bit longer or this was another exercise in public relations by Nixon by Nixon to impress upon Pakistan was their true. Certainty domestic political support within the United States such intervention was totally lacking. The media had been auite vocal on this issue and jack Anderson had already published his much quoted expose of the leaked minutes of the National Council where Kissinger had reported on Nixon's instructions for the U.S State Department of take a strong stand against India. Members of Congress, led by Church, Kennedy and other friends of Bangladesh, had of course been active in mobilizing Congressional opinion against such an intervention. It may thus be speculated that had the U.S. public, media and Congressional opinion been less sympathetic or even indifferent of the Bangladesh cause the Nixon administration may well have gone much further in their support of Pakistan. To this extent the intensive campaign to go to over the head of the unsympathetic Nixon administration to the American people was not without significance to the Bangladesh cause.
We had to the end maintained communication with the donors to see that they did not reopen the question of fresh aid pledges to Pakistan. This had meant a final visit by me to Paris in early November for a meeting of the Pakistan Consortium. Another breakfast meeting with Cargill had confirmed that inspite of considerable U.S. pressure the members of the consortium were neither inclined to exclaimed to extend new pledges of aid or to commit themselves to a rescheduling of Pakistan's debt servicing ability. This stand had elicited a threat from Pakistan to declare a unilateral default their on their debt service obligations, Such a development would of course have immediately invoked a total cut off in aid the pipeline by such countries as Japan who were bound strong by strong legislative constraints in responding to the threat of default. The World Bank at this stage felt that they may have gone too far and were active too far and were active in trying to work out a compromise between Pakistan and the Consortium Which would have averted any overt default by Pakistan.
Here again an assessment of the campaign to persuade donors to cut off aid to Pakistan must be viewed as a moderate gain for Bangladesh. From the initiation of the campaign by me in May, to the liberation of Bangladesh 16 December 1971, none of the members of the Consortium actually pledge any new aid to Pakistan. There were however pledges of relief supplies in the way of food and transport equipment which was presented by donors as a humanitarian gesture to avert famine in Bangladesh. In actual practice however, Pakistan had a full pipeline of aid, its current import programme into the Bangladesh area had been drastically cut down, ti had been cating into its foreign
