RAWALPINDI: Malik Mohammad Qasim, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence, said that the Government was providing every encouragement to the people of East Pakistan to join Defence Forces and hoped that gradually they would be able to get their due share in the Armed Services of the country. ...Malik Qasim said Pakistan had to maintain a very sound and seasoned army as there were countries specially a big neighbour which had not reconciled to the existence of this country and for that reason “we had to be vigilant all the time”.

Conceding that East Pakistan’s demand for more representation in armed forces was legitimate, the Parliamentary Secretary said East Wing’s poor representation in the army was a legacy which dated back to 200 years. He said at the time of Partition the number of East Pakistanis in the Defence Forces was negligible. Even after Independence, he said, when the Government laboured hard to take greater number of East Pakistanis in the defence services not many talented persons came forward. But, he said, now East Pakistanis were joining the defence services in fairly reasonable number and they are in no way inferior to West Pakistanis.

[Meanwhile, as reported by agencies from Algiers] a summit conference of about 50 African and Asian nations, scheduled to begin here next Tuesday, has been indefinitely postponed, authoritative sources said here today [June 26]. A 15-nation preparatory committee decided to postpone indefinitely both an Afro-Asian Foreign Ministers’ meeting — which was to have been held today — and the summit. With Algiers swept by frequent riots against the military regime of strongman Col. Houari Boumedienne, most of the Foreign Ministers had reached the conclusion that conditions were not suitable for a summit conference in Algiers at this time.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2015

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