RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 21—Pakistan's new President, Zulfikar All Bhutto, appointed a Bengali as Vice President today and declared that the Bengali secessionist leader, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, would soon be moved from prison to house arrest.

Both moves seemed to be gestures of insistence that East Pakistan—the Bengali region seized by India in the 15‐day war this month—remain part of Pakistan.

The new Vice President is Nurul Amin, leader of a small right‐wing Bengali party, who will have his 78th birthday on Thursday. He is not expected to have any real power in Mr. Bhutto's Government, but his appointment is considered symbolically important.

“We shall move soon to transfer Sheik Mujib to some kind of house arrest situation rather than imprisonment,” President Bhutto said in a meeting with newsmen tonight. He disclosed that Sheik Mujib was being held at a prison in Lyalipur, in the Punjab region of West Pakistan, but would be moved from there “very soon.”

There was speculation that Mr. Bhutto would order the re lease of Sheik Mujib, who has been imprisoned since March 25, and his return to East Pakistan, once public opinion has been prepared for such a step.

Sheik Mujib is held in high esteem by the Bengalis and it is considered almost certain that he would be named as the head of the regime now functioning in East Pakistan if he were permitted to return there.

Mr. Bhutto, 43‐year‐old leader of the Pakistan People's party, was installed as President yesterday, succeeding Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, who was forced from office as a result of widespread bitterness over his conduct of the war with India.

The new President, who has made a plea for popular support in his efforts to meet the national crisis, issued a policy directive today outlawing both capital and corporal punishment in Pakistan. His decree commuted all death sentences imposed on common criminals to life imprisonment and stipulated that sentences involving lashes were not to be carried out.

Lashings Are Frequent

Execution of prisoners in Pakistan is normally by hanging, and there are many executions each year. Prison sentences frequently are accompanied by up to a dozen lashes.

The President also ordered “the immediate withdrawal of cases against students, laborers and peasants pending in military courts.” The order was tantamount to a general amnesty for many political prisoners held in Pakistani jails.

In keeping with his statement last night that he in tended to prevent the flight of capital from the country, Mr. Bhutto issued a decree today prohibiting Pakistanis from going abroad.

The appointment of Mr. Nurul Amin as Vice President is clearly a gesture to indicate Mr. Bhutto's insistence that East Pakistan, where secessionist leaders, supported by India, have proclaimed the establishment of Bangladesh, or Bengal Nation, is still part of this country. Mr. Nurul Amin has only a very small political following, although he currently heads a coalition of right‐wing and mainly religious splinter par ties, all more or less in opposition to Mr. Bhutto.

Mr. Nurul Amin was designated Prime Minister by General Yahya Khan in a conciliatory gesture after the war with India began, but the Bengali declined to serve after his home province was taken by Indian troops and Bengali secessionists.

Bhutto Met With Nixon

Mr. Bhutto came to office yesterday after what amounted to a bloodless coup d'6tat against President Yahya Khan.

According to a series of official announcements, General Yahya Khan said Sunday that he would resign as soon as Mr. Bhutto returned from a trip to the United States, where he had participated in United Nations debater: on the Indian Pakistani crisis and then met with President Nixon. General Yahya did, in fact, step down within an hour after Mr. Bhutto's arrival.

Photographs were released showing President Yahya Khan with the new President at the swearing‐in ceremony yesterday, and the outward impression was one of a constitutional transfer of power.

In fact, however, there is no constitution and General Yahya Khan was forced from office partly by a series of unrestrained public demonstrations in which his home in Peshawar was burned, but mainly at the insistence of armed forces commanders who had turned against him.

Pakistan's difficulties—which Mr. Bhutto last night called “the worst crisis in our history”—grew out of what the Bengalis of East Pakistan long considered their economic exploitation by the Punjabi‐dominated West Pakistan regime.

In the nation's first general election last December, the Awami League, the Bengali party headed by Sheik Mujib, won a national majority on a platform demanding autonomy for East Pakistan. President Yahya Khan reacted by canceling the election results and, after fruitless negotiations, imprisoning Sheik Mujib. This was followed by military action last spring in which many Bengalis were killed.

The flight of millions of ref u gees from East Pakistan into India raised tensions between the two neighboring countries that erupted into full‐scale war this month, with India supporting the secessionist Bangladesh leaders.

The leaders of the military faction that demanded the ouster of President Yahya Khan presumably included Air Marshal Abdul Rahim. Khan, Commander of the Air Force, and Lieut. Gen. Abdul Gul Hasan, who was appointed by President Bhutto yesterday as acting Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.

In other appointments today, Mr. Bhutto named Aziz Ahmed, a former Ambassador to the United States, as Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry and Yahya Bakhtiar as Attorney General.

Mr. Bhutto, in addition to being President and Chief Martial‐Law Administrator, is also Foreign Minister and Minister of Defense.

Last night Mr. Bhutto declined to answer a question at a news conference as to whether General Yahya Khan would be put on trial. “The people will have to decide that question, which is prematurely asked,” he said.

But the political coalition headed by the new Vice President, among many other groups, has demanded publicly during the last two days that the former President be tried on charges of responsibility for “the shameful defeat and dismemberment of the country” by India.

Mr. Bhutto, probably acting at the insistence of the new upper tier of military commanders, yesterday dismissed former President Yahya Khan and six other army generals from the service.