Calcutta, June 16.

Mr George Thomson, Labour MP for Dundee East, told Parliament the other day that nobody in his “darkest imaginings” could have believed that a man-made tragedy would soon overshadow the cyclone disaster in East Pakistan last year.

Mr Thomson was wrong. Three British diplomats had two years ago concluded that this tragedy was in the offing, but their reports and their constant warnings were apparently ignored by two successive British Governments.

Sir Cyril Pickard, the former High Commissioner lo Pakistan, and his two deputies, Mr Henry Twist, and Mr Roy Fox, who were intimately acquainted with political and economic compulsions in Pakistan, had first warned Mr Wilson’s Government of the possibility of such a tragedy at the beginning of 1969.

When restrictions on political activity in Pakistan were lifted in 1970 and when it became apparent that Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, the West Pakistan and East Pakistan leaders, would never meet to frame a constitution, the three diplomats’ apprehensions increased.

Sir Cyril made several quiet attempts to divert the course of events but in the final weeks of recriminations in East and West Pakistan he resigned himself to the hopelessness of his efforts.

Earlier Sir Cyril had assessed that the East Pakistanis' political demands for autonomy were the product of the alarming economic situation in the impoverished province. He had constantly urged both the Labour and Conservative Governments to give aid to the backward eastern wing. But it would appear that his dispatches were ignored.

For instance one of his associates describes how Sir Cyril, after a visit to London, threw up his hands in despair and said: “Interest in Britain does not extend east of London docks."