Word: yahya
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...their part, the Russians sent a stern note to President Yahya urging him to seek a political solution that would end the bitter civil war in East Pakistan and halt the influx of refugees into India. The Soviets have also used their influence with New Delhi to call for restraints on India. Under the terms of a 20-year "friendship treaty" signed in August, Moscow and New Delhi are obliged to consult when either is threatened with attack. Since the Russians are known to want no part of a conflict that could bring China in on Pakistan's side, they...
...protagonists in this conflict are two extraordinarily strongwilled, even stubborn leaders. At 54, Yahya is a tough-talking professional soldier who rarely shows any inclination for compromise and exhibits his impatience at the drop of an epithet. "Stop reminding me every day," he once snarled at Pakistani journalists when they asked about his repeated promises of a return to democracy for his country. "The people did not bring me to power. I came myself." The stocky former army chief of staff, a Pathan who came to power in 1 969 when widespread strikes and dis orders forced President Ayub Khan...
Child of the Nation The remark was not only ungallant, it was imprudent. For when it comes to tough-mindedness, Mrs. Gandhi is at least a match for Yahya Khan. As the only daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, she was carefully groomed for leadership and grew up an adored and beloved "child of the nation." From her father she inherited a sense of grace under pressure, but where he was the idealist, she is much more the pragmatist. As one political commentator observed: "Her father was a dreamer who did not act decisively. The people loved Nehru, but ihey are impressed...
...prospect of the political balance of power moving from West Pakistan to the East was not acceptable to the generals. On March 25, Yahya outlawed the Awami League, arrested Mujib, who is now being tried for treason, and launched a ruthless repression that by one estimate has claimed a million lives and has sent nearly 10 million refugees flooding into India, most of them into the state of West Bengal. Awami League leaders who escaped to India promptly set up the Bangla Desh government in exile with headquarters in Calcutta, and some 130 Bengali diplomats subsequently defected from Pakistani missions...
There were also indications last week that Yahya is beginning to feel threatened by political opposition in the West. Charging that "some of its leaders are in collaboration with the enemy and are trying to foment revolt in West Pakistan," he suddenly outlawed the National Awami Party, a labor-oriented leftist group that emerged as the dominant provincial party in elections last December. The Pakistani President has promised to convene the National Assembly later this month. But with both the East's Awami League and the West's National Awami League disenfranchised, the Assembly is beginning to appear about...