March 25th is. of course. the day when the central government of Pakistan decided to establish military rule in East Bengal and started the process which has led to the present situation. The United States has never supported the particular action that led to this tragic series of events. and the United States has always recognized that this action had consequences which had a considerable impact on India. We have always recognized that the influx of refugees Into India produced the danger of communal strife in a country always precariously poised on the edge of communal strife. We have known that it is a strain on the already scarce economic resources of a country in the process of development. Therefore. from the beginning. the United States has played a very active role in attempting to ease the suffering of the refugees and the impact on India of this large influx of unexpected people. The United States position has been to attempt two efforts simultaneously: One. to ease the human suffering and to bring about the return of the refugees. and secondly. we have attempted to bring about a political resolution of the conflict which generated the refugees in the first place. One of the difficulties has been that the time required to bring about a political evolution is somewhat longer than what is needed to be done immediately to bring about an easing of human suffering. Now. you have been given by Ron the figures of what we have contributed. but let me summarize them and let me refer here. because I do not have them all in my head. There were two aspects to the refugee problem: One. taking care of the refugees that were inside India. and secondly. to avert conditions inside East Pakistan that would generate more refugees. particularly to ease famine conditions. We committed $90 million for the support of the refugees in India and $155 million to avert famine in East Pakistan. which is more than the rest of the world has done combined. I might add that the sums that have been devoted to averting famine in East Pakistan have been contributed at the specific request of the Indian Government. which was concerned that there would be another major outflow of refugees which would make their problem totally unmanageable. The President has requested Congress. in the present AID appropriation. for an additional $250 million to continue this work. and this is in addition to food shipments which we were prepared to make. In other words. the United States has contributed $500 million for the relief of refugees and to ease suffering in India. and to prevent more refugees from coming into India. The United States also financed the chartering of 26 vessels to increase their capacity to transport grain from ocean ports into the interior of East Pakistan. We will give you a breakdown of all of these figures. but we wanted to give you a flavor of what was done.
Keywords matched
refugee refugees