Interview to the Editor of the “Illustrated Weekly of India”, August 10, 1973

President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said that he gave no assurance at the Indo-Pakistan Summit last year that he would recognize Bangladesh shortly. Mr. Bhutto added, all he had said—and that too at a dinner meeting and not at the conference table—was that he was “moving in the direction of taking the Bangladesh problem to the National Assembly sometime in August (1972)”.

That, Mr. Bhutto said, was no formal, solemn assurance. It was merely thinking aloud. Mr. Bhutto asserted that his country was addressing all its energies to the improvement of relations with India.

Mr. Bhutto regretted that although good relations between India and Soviet Union during the time of late Jawahar Lal Nehru were understandable, a quantitative change had occurred after August 1971 when the Indo-Soviet treaty of friendship was signed.