Washington Star/Evening Star

NEW DELHI.—Prime Minister Indira Gandhi warned Pakistan yesterday that India, whose eastern frontier regions have been inundated with 2.8 million refugees from the civil war in East Pakistan, "is fully prepared to tight if the situation is forced on us."
It was Mrs. Gandhi's strongest warning yet to the Pakistan federal government to stop its eight-week offensive against Bengali secessionists in East Pakistan.

"Unending exodus"

Simultaneously, Indian ambassadors were reported to have alerted Great Britain and France that India may be forced to act in its national interest in the face of the "unending exodus of refugees from East Bengal."
India already has appealed for international help in handling the Bengali refugees. A United Nations panel that toured the refugee camps reported Monday that India has a "monumental" problem that may last for another three to six months.
Mrs. Gandhi said in a speech yesterday at the Himalayan hill station of Ranikhet, in Uttar Pradesh State, that the refugees have created "a major problem which will severely affect the nation's economic, social and political life."
She said if Pakistan's claim that East Pakistan has returned to normal is really so, then it should invite the refugees back to their homes.
The world should "see for itself how democracy is being murdered in East Pakistan," Mrs. Gandhi said.

"Threat to peace"

India sent a note to Pakistan on Saturday—its strongest since the East Pakistani crisis began March 25—saying the growing tide of refugees is "leading to a threat to peace in the region."
There has been little love lost, politically, between India and Pakistan ever since the subcontinent won independence and was partitioned in 1947, with Hindu-majority areas becoming part of India and Moslem-majority areas part of Pakistan.
The two countries fought a brief and indecisive war in late 1965 and have been on the verge of war many times before and since.