1971-04-02
By Benjamin Welles
Page: 1
Britain May also Act
WASHINGTON, April 1— United States military planes will begin evacuating dependents of American officials and private United States citizens from East Pakistan tomorrow, the State Department announced today.
It was understood that Britain would also begin airlifting British subjects from the area, which has been torn by civil strife for a week.
As the United States made its decision to move, Senator Edward M. Kennedy charged that the Nixon Administration was in effect suppressing re ports from East Pakistan of “indiscriminate” killing, continuing fighting and a mounting threat of famine.
Official sources said that American C‐130 transport planes would fly in from Utaphao air base, Thailand, and would take the Americans from Dacca in East Pakistan to Bangkok, Thailand. Smaller air planes may lift some out from the Chittagong airport. It had been hoped that chartered civilian aircraft could be used, officials said, to reduce the air of emergency in deference to the Pakistani Government, which has announced that calm is rapidly returning to East Pakistan.
Officials said that current plans called for only one air plane to fly in each day to soften any hint of emergency.
“This is not an emergency evacuation,” the State Department spokesman insisted. “This is a temporary reduction in number of Americans in East Pakistan.”
He conceded, nonetheless, that although the evacuation of private American citizens would be optional, dependents of United States officials would have to leave.
Civilian airlines refused to risk landing at Dacca, where Pakistani troops are said to guard both the airport and the control tower. Experienced Bengali air controllers have fled, sources here say. United States military planes, which have had their own ladders and starting equipment therefore had to be used.
Charles W. Bray, 3d, the State Department spokesman, said that the United States intended to leave a substantial number of the 80 American officials in East Pakistan at the consulate general. Otherwise, he intimated, virtually all the 705 Americans in the area would be flown out.
While reluctant to go into details—again in deference to White House orders not to inflame Pakistani opinion — Mr. Bray indicated that disruption of mail, telephone and other community services, plus the closing of schools, made it impossible for the American com munity to lead a normal life.