Observer (London)

Decision taken today in the decayed city of Dacca, capital of East Pakistan and the turbulent centre of Bengali nationalism, could lead to civil war. In that event, the Muslim State of Pakistan might well be split in two after less than 25 years of independent existence. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, East Pakistan’s 50-year-old political boss, announced yesterday that he would address a mass rally of his people today on the Paltan Maidan, the great open space in the middle of Dacca which has long been its political battleground. His lieutenants, promising ‘an historic statement' imply that he will unilaterally declare East Pakistan an independent State, separating it from West Pakistan, the seat of national government.

Evidently in anticipation of this move, the President General Yahya Khan - who still holds absolute power as the country’s military ruler - gave a stern warning in a broadcast to the nation at noon yesterday that he would never permit a break-up of Pakistan. And he made it clear that he was talking about military intervention in the East. ‘No matter what happens,’ he said, ‘as long as I am in command of the Pakistan armed force, I will ensure the complete and absolute integrity of Pakistan. Let there be no doubt on this point. I will not allow a few people to destroy the homeland of millions of Pakistanis.’

At the same time, President Yahya has taken two steps in an attempt to cool the crisis and prevent today’s possibly fatal showdown in Dacca. He announced that the National Assembly, created by Pakistan’s first national democratic election last December, would meet on 25 March to start framing a new constitution transferring power from the Army to the people. It was in this election that Sheikh Mujibur as leader of the Awami League, was given overwhelming but lopsided popular power. He won almost every national seat in East Pakistan, but got virtually no support in West Pakistan.

It was the Sheikh’s proclaimed determination to impose on all Pakistan a constitution giving to East Pakistan an autonomy stopping only just short of secession that precipitated the present crisis. It led Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto - the former Foreign Minister whose People’s Party won power in West Pakistan - to declare that he would boycott the first session of the new National Assembly, fixed for 3 March. This in its turn led President Yahya to postpone the Assembly ‘indefinitely’ an announcement that instantly brought an outburst of arson, looting and murder in East Pakistan. Heavy censorship has so far prevented publication of an accurate death toll, though one agency report which leaked out on Friday set the figure at 2,000 killed by Army machine-gun fire.

President Yahya Khan also announced yesterday that he was leaving at once for East Pakistan - a brave, even reckless, attempt to assert his personal control. It was a violent upheaval in East Pakistan, spearheaded by university students, that brought about the downfall of Yahya’s predecessor as military ruler, Field-Marshal Ayub Khan. There can be no doubt that by flying to Dacca President Yahya is putting his life at risk. If he seriously believes that Bengali separatists in East Pakistan can be described as ‘a few people’, he will soon discover himself to be mistaken.

It is said that the Pakistan Army had two-and-a-half divisions in East Pakistan when these troubles began. Efforts to inject reinforcements have been made since then. But East Pakistan is separated from West Pakistan by more than 1,000 miles of Indian territory and since an Indian Airlines plane was hijacked to Lahore by two Kashmiris a few week ago, India has banned all Pakistani over flights. Pakistan’s plane are now obliged to make a long detour round the tip of India by way of Ceylon. India’s Defence Minister, Jagjivan Ram, said the over flight ban would continue in spite of the Pakistan crisis. Sheikh Mujibur’s plan for an autonomous East Pakistan includes the creation of a local militia. But this does not yet exist, and the Pakistan Army has only one regiment drawing its personnel from the east.

In a brief dispatch received yesterday in London, our Dacca Correspondent reports that Sheikh Mujibur is ‘still staggering to keep Pakistan as one country,’ but is under ‘enormous pressure from almost the entire populace to say “to hell with you” to the country’s rulers in West Pakistan.’ The Sheikh himself has always contended that East Pakistan is ‘a neglected colony of West Pakistan and that his autonomy plan alone will free the Bengalis from this subjection.’

Our correspondent puts the death toll at ‘about 200’ and says this relatively low figure is due to the restraint so far shown by the Army, even though angry crowds are everywhere defying the curfew imposed on the province. The Sheikh has appealed to his people to calm down and to do nothing to aggravate the crisis - unless they get his orders to behave differently. At the moment, the Bengalis are prepared to do almost anything at the Sheikh’s bidding. But their temper could change if he were to disappoint them.

Awami League leaders do not agree that the Army is holding its fire. The party’s general secretary, Tajuddin Ahmad, has declared that ‘naked force’ is being used ‘against the unarmed civilian population of Bangla’ - the movement’s name for East Pakistan. In an evident attempt to spread the unrest, Ahmad has appealed to the people of West Pakistan to join in demanding that Army action in the East should ‘end forthwith.’ Sheikh Mujibur himself has charged the Army with ‘behaving like an occupation force.’ But he has denied a report broadcast by All-India Radio that he has appealed to the United States to put pressure on President Yahya to stop “repression’ in East Pakistan.

In his broadcast to the nation - as monitored in New Delhi - the President said that since the Pakistan election ended in December, ‘practically every step I took in the process of transferring power to the people has in one way or other been obstructed by some of our leaders.’ He said he had postponed the National Assembly only in order to allow passions to cool, but his action has been ‘completely misunderstood.’ He said his orders were that only an absolute minimum of force should now be used to stop the East Pakistan rioting. He appealed to Pakistanis to ‘go forward with confidence in themselves and faith in Allah towards the goal of achieving a democratic way of life.’

In his private talks with President Yahya and Bhutto since the election, Sheikh Mujibur has said that East Pakistan has been ‘swindled’ out of the autonomy promised to it before the partition of India, when a separate country for Indian Muslims was still being planned. He says, correctly, that the Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution of March, 1940 - under which Pakistan was created - had promised a group of ‘independent States in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.’

Under the new constitution due to be framed by Pakistan’s National Assembly, the Sheikh - who commands a national majority - will allow the central government to control only foreign affairs and defence. He is determined that the centre shall not control taxation and foreign trade, arguing that it is under these two headings in particular that East Pakistan has been ‘exploited’ by the West. The Sheikh has already agreed with Yahya that a proportion of provincial taxes will go automatically to the defence budget. But the Bengalis object strongly to 70 per cent of all revenues going - as they do now - to the Army, foreign affairs and currency exchange.

They resent having to pay for a Pakistan Army of 300,000, the chief purpose of which is to confront India over the possession of Kashmir - a dispute about which the remote Bengalis have no strong feelings. Moreover, Bangla is keen to resume trade with India, halted since the 1965 war. Although many Indians deplore the very existence of Pakistan, the Indian Government is not anxious to see it split into two sovereign states. The official Indian view is that if Mujibur commands a majority in Pakistan’s new national parliament, the chances of war with India will be reduced.

India also believes that if East Pakistan breaks away, her economic condition will probably worsen. In that event, Sheikh Mujibur, now the popular hero, might become discredited. The local Communists would then grow in impatience and might one day favour links with the dominant Communists of West Bengal in India. The economic prospects for an independent East Pakistan are not, in fact, good. Until recently, its exports accounted for a bigger share of foreign earnings than those from West Pakistan. But this is no longer true. The West has been successfully industrialised and such industry as there is in the East - still a typical ‘colonial exploitation area’, relying heavily on jute - has its financial roots in the West.

East Pakistan is the first area in the world where the nightmare of ultimate population explosion is already a fact. It has a density of about 1,300 people to the square mile in a land one-third of which is regularly flooded and from which there can be no effective emigration. Most experts agree that, with things as they are, East Pakistan is incapable of going it alone.