A curious hiatus persists in the crisis that threatens to sever East from West Pakistan. For the past week it was assumed that President Yahya Khan would be arriving in Dacca at any moment to meet Shaikh Mujibur Rahman and work out a compromise. The leader of the East Pakistanis would then be able to go to the projected meeting of the constitutional assembly on March 25. Mr. Bhutto, the political leader in West Pakistan, has already consented to attend. after having refused to turn up for the first meeting of the assembly and having thereby precipitated the present crisis.

By now Mr. Bhutto's attitude seems to have swung round —after a meeting he has had with President Yahya Khan. He said yesterday that he would be glad to have talks with Shaikh Mujibur Rahman. and he now seems ready to concede the greater part of the autonomy that East Pakistan demands and would be willing to govern alongside the Awami League. It is for President Yahya khan to find his way to some kind of compromise that will keep the country together.

The task will not be at all easy, Almost two weeks have passed since the East Pakistanis launched their non-violent. non-cooperation movement. While this has demonstrated to them and to the central government in Rawalpindi just what backing Shaikh Mujibur Rahman has got, it has also created conditions of tension and difficulty in daily life.

Trade between west and east has almost ceased. The movement of money is restricted. Civil servants in Dacca are to effect answerable to the authority that has collected round the Shaikh. The police are agents of control for the east but the imposition of martial law and the presence of the army from the west has added to the other tensions. The east demands that martial law should be ended and the troops recalled to barracks lest it should seem to be negotiating under pressure. For President Yahya Khan such conditions are not easy to accept when his advisers might argue that military power is the only power he can now exert to keep the country together.

There is thus no time to lose if this instability is to be ended. One way out as a temporary measure would be to grant to Shaikh Mujibur Rahman the formal authority which he now de facto exercises. Volunteers from his own Awami League are now working everywhere in cooperation with the police. But to make such a concession might seem in the eyes of the central government to sell the pass before even the constitutional assembly has met.

At any rate both sides have been somewhere near the brink. and both are consequently disposed to draw back. The central government has seen what a following of adamant Bengali nationalists Shaikh Mujibur Rahman can command, and the Shaikh himself must be well aware how rough conditions have become for him and how disastrous an ill-prepared assertion of independence could be.