‘Nixon faced revolt from diplomats for backing Pak in 1971′

As he asked his administration to support Pakistan against India in the 1971 war, the then US President Richard Nixon had faced a virtual revolt from his diplomats with the entire State Department team based in Dhaka writing the so-called Blood telegram, which was supported by Secretary of State William Rogers, a new book has claimed.

While his diplomats were calling for a different approach — a policy that stops massacre of innocent people and supports democracy — Nixon’s direction to his administration to support Pakistan in this 1971-conflict was mainly driven by his animosity with then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and his secret desire to open up with China, for which he was seeking help from the Pakistani leadership, argues former CIA official Bruce Riedel in his latest book ‘Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back’.

“Acting under President guidance, Kissinger ordered the US government to “tilt” toward Pakistan and Yahya. Many in the bureaucracy resisted. At one National Security Council meeting, Kissinger exclaimed, ‘The President always says to tilt toward Pakistan, but every proposal I get is in the opposite direction. Sometimes I think I am in a nut house,” he wrote.

The American diplomats on the scene were appalled at their country’s policy, Riedel writes adding that in 1971, virtually the entire country team in Dhaka signed a dissent cable.

“Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens [dual nationals of the US and (East) Pakistan] while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pakistan dominated government and to lessen likely and deservedly negative international public relations impact against (it),” the cable said.

“Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy, ironically at a time when the USSR sent President Yahya a message defending democracy, condemning arrests of leaders of a democratically elected majority party (incidentally pro-West).

But we have chosen not to intervene even morally on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely an internal matter,” the cable said.

The then US consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, sent the cable- the so-called Blood telegram- to Washington, and several officers in the department signed a letter to Secretary of State William Rogers supporting it, he said.

“The consul general had classified the cable “confidential,” but Nixon had it reclassified “secret/NODIS,” the highest classification possible for a State Department cable, to restrict its dissemination.

“Nixon’s tilt was only in part a reflection of his animus toward India and his fondness for Pakistan. Behind the scenes the president and his national security adviser were reversing over two decades of American policy toward China, and they needed Yahya and Pakistan to do it,” Riedel said.