To the Editor: In his Nov. 9 letter, Ambassador Sen of India expressed his displeasure at Benjamin Oehlert for daring to ask [letter Nov. 3] why India has refused to accept Pakistan's proposal that forces be withdrawn from both sides of the India‐Pakistan border, a U.N. offer to supervise refugee repatriation and U Thant's offer of good offices.

Mr. Sen asks: If President Yahya Khan wished to withdraw troops from the frontiers, why, did he send them there? He forgets that the Pakistani army was ordered to forward border posts several months after India's armed forces not only drew up along the international border but Infiltrated into East Pakistan. Indian soldiers were captured inside East Pakistan as far back as April 10, 1971.

Mrs. Gandhi, rejecting Pakistan's troop withdrawal proposal, asserts that Pakistan's lines of communication to the border are much shorter than India's. This should strain the credulity of your readers, who are informed almost every day that East and West Pakistan are a thousand miles apart. The Pakistani President's proposal that the withdrawals should be to peace‐time stations or to a mutually agreed safe distance from the border has been ignored.

Mr. Sen asks: How could anyone ask the, refugees to go back to be killed? Neutral observers have been reported by the U.S. press as saying that a man has ‘less chance of dying from a bullet in East Pakistan than from malnutrition or disease in India. These reports add that although the refugees are an enormous economic burden, India is apparently willing to bear it until it achieves its major political goal of hastening Pakistan's disintegration.

Mr. Sen adds that for normalcy in East Pakistan the Pakistani Government should come to terms with the elected and accepted leaders of that region. This, I suppose, means that leaders may be elected’ by the people. of East Pakistan but they have to be accepted by India.

About the third proposal, Mr. Sen says India will welcome any U.N. at tempts to bring about a political settlement with Sheikh Mujib and his elected colleagues. , Apart from the simple fact that this would involve the rewriting of the U.N. Charter, your readers will not have failed to note from dispatches published in your paper that the Indian‐supported guerrillas are now saying that if Sheikh Mujib was released and negotiated settlement with the Government, he would want the guerrillas to kill him. It must have been the same sort of logic which enabled them to convert unilaterally the Awami League's man date for autonomy into a demand for secession.

AGHA SHAHI
Ambassador of Pakistan at the U.N.
New York, Nov. 16, 1971