Washington's renewed efforts to obtain effective intervention by the United Nations Security Council to stop the Indian‐Pakistani conflict are once again too little and too late.

The most recent United States resolution, like similar earlier resolutions that were vetoed by the Russians in the Council but adopted by the General Assembly, is too little because it fails to deal with the political problem in East Bengal which is the basic source of the conflict. It is too late because the oppressed Bengalis and their Indian neighbors are already on the brink of success—at least short‐run success—in their use of force to establish a free Bengal.

A more realistic solution to the grave and growing international crisis precipitated by the Indian‐Pakistani war was contained in a letter sent late last week to U.N. Secretary General Thant by the civil affairs adviser to the Governor of East Pakistan. The letter sought United Nations intervention to achieve a cease‐fire, repatriation of civilian and military personnel from East to West Pakistan with full honors and safety for all persons settled in East Pakistan since 1947. It called upon “the elected representatives in East Pakistan to arrange for the peaceful formation of a government in East Pakistan,” concluding that “this is a definite proposal for the peaceful transfer of power.”

The subsequent disavowal of this proposal by President Yahya Khan and other Pakistani spokesmen was a bitter blow to the prospect of an early peace and the beginning of essential reconciliation on the subcontinent. It reflects the stubbornly suicidal policies that have prevailed in Islamabad since the beginning of the repression in East Bengal last March, policies that can never restore what long since had been squandered—the faith of East Bengalis in a united Pakistan—but can lead to a wider war and heavy new losses of life, military and civilian.

United States interests on the subcontinent would be better served if Washington counseled greater realism and flexibility in Islamabad and now pressed for a solution at the United Nations which recognized the necessity for a “peaceful transfer of power” in Dacca.