I rise today to discuss briefly the situation in East Pakistan and the American response to a situation which our arms and military equipment helped to create. The current policy. which has allowed arms to continue to be shipped from the United States to the Government of Pakistan. in spite of the ban of March 25. is bureaucratic ineptitude which will become. in my judgment. diplomatic catastrophe. On June 15 I introduced H.R. 9160 which will cut off all military. economic and relief assistance to the Government of Pakistan until outside observers report a cessation of army action against the population of East Pakistan and that the refugees. as far as feasible. have been allowed to return to their homeland and reclaim their property. I visited the refugee camps early in June and found the situation to be one of unimaginable horror. Although many of the world community regard the crisis as an internal matter of Pakistan. it appears obvious to me that any policy which creates 6 mIllion refugees completely destroys the queasy legalism of "an internal matter." In addition. it is bad enough that our arms contributed to the brutal actions of the armys repressive sweep through East Pakistan on and after March 25. it is impermissible for us to continue to subsidize the slaughter by not completely stopping our arms shipments. The shipments of military equipment now going forward are in the Department of Defense pipeline. due to the fact that ownership passed to the Government of Pakistan prior to the time the ban was announced. The only way now to plug up that pipeline is for the United States to issue a formal embargo and I regard that step as crucial.
Keywords matched
refugee refugees