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The Daily

Morning News

07 MAY 1971

News headlines and details from the Daily Morning News.

News Headlines:

• Outlawed AL had set small hours of March 26 for Armed uprising.

Other Headlines:

• Indian design to cripple our economy will be foiled.
• People extending full co-operation to Pakistan Army.

Outlawed AL had set small hours of March 26 for armed uprising

Rawalpindi, May 6, (APP) : The outlawed Awami League had set the small hours of March 26 as the zero hour for an armed uprising and the formal launching of the independent republic of Bangladesh, an official spokesman of the Pakistan Government revealed here today.

In a detailed statement on the East Pakistan situation, the spokes man said that the plan was to seize Dacca and Chittagong lying astride the army's air sea lifelines to West Pakistan.

But, he said, the army moved barely a few hours before the AL zero hour for action in response to a call from the president and made a series of primitive strikes around mid night of March 25-26, seized the initiative and saved the country.

He said the army at that time consisted of a division of 18 battalions including 12 from West Pakistan spread thinly over cantonment in the interior and deployed along the border with India. Arrayed against them were infiltrators from India and deserters from the East Pakistan Rifles, the East Bengal Regiment, and other auxiliary forces, equipped with mortals recoilless rifles and heavy and light machine guns; and according to subsequent evidence liberally supplied from across the border.

The AL,s bid for secession was now under way. Having already exhausted all avenues of peaceful transfer of power, the president now called upon the armed forces to  do their duty and fully restore the authority of the Government.

Well planned move

"An idea of how well planned and well organised the AL move was can be gathered from the mortal fire which came from Jagganath Hall on the night of 25th-26th March and the appearance within 3 hours of innumerable barricades all over the city of Dacca on the night of 25th of March", the statement said.

The spokesman recounted president Yahya Khan's efforts to hold negotiations with Sheikh Mujib to hammer out a compromise.

He also referred to visit to East Pakistan of one political leader after another, including the leader of  the largest political party of West Pakistan to negotiate a settlement with him.

But the AL chief instead adopted a deliberate posture of rigidity to take it or leave it that left no room for negotiations.

Shifting of stand

The spokesman also gave a resume of Sheikh Mujib's continual shifting of stand from his pre-election interpretation of six-points as the demand for largest measure for autonomy within the framework of a single country (for which he got the mandate) to the demand of confederation and his attempts to achieve it through conspiracy and force using "Nazi style tactics."

He sized on a temporary adjournment of the National Assembly announced with the object of facilitating talks among party leaders to pave the way for an agreed approach to constitution making within the house, to launch a massive defiance of law and order.

What followed is well known. All hell broke loose, mobs took to the streets and indulged in arson, murder, rape and loot.

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