UNITED NATIONS: Bangla Desh was reported Tuesday [Jan 18] to have told the United Nations it is planning to try “accused collaborator Ben­galees”, who were siding with the now defunct East Pakistan Government. That was set out in a report to the Security Council from Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim on the recent mission of Vittorio Winspeare Guicciardi, his special representative for humanitarian problems in India and Pakistan. … Bangla Desh officials in Dacca informed Mr. Winspeare, the report said, that they were “sympathetic in principle” to the idea of letting West Pakistanis who had been in the East Pakistan Government, return to West Pakistan. — News agencies

[Meanwhile, according to news agencies in Rawalpindi,] A spokesman of the War Probe Commission said here today [Jan 19] it was doubtful if a report produced by a prisoner-of-war held by India, with the help of an Indian stenographer, could be taken as admissible testimony for purposes of a judicial inquiry. The spokesman was commenting on a “Reuter” report … that Lt-Gen A.A.K. Niazi … was writing his version of the 12-day-war in the East including his and former President Yahya Khan’s role in it. The report added, “The Indian Government had provided a stenographer to the General now held at an undisclosed place to prepare the document.”

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2022