BONN: Indian Foreign Minister Swaran Singh said here last night [June 10] the displaced persons from Pakistan now in his country were there on a very temporary basis and would have to go to other countries if conditions were not right for them to return....

“We can’t keep them. If the international community thinks they cannot go, then let it make arrangements to take them,” he told a Press conference after meeting Chancellor Willy Brandt and West German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel.

Asked if the Indian Government had set a time-limit for keeping the displaced persons, he said it had made budgetary provisions to give them “temporary shelter” for six months, but the number of displaced persons on which these provisions estimated had already been exceeded. He said the amount of money originally budgeted might now cover only three to four months. But he declined to say whether this meant a definite time-limit for the stay of the displaced persons.

… [Mr Singh[ said he was not suggesting a direct economic boycott but felt “that the giving of economic aid for the reconstruction of Pakistan should be linked with a corrective in the political field so that they give up their policies”.

Published in Dawn, June 12th, 2021