Recent Dhaka-based media reports carrying contradictory statements from US authorities and Bangladesh Ministers suggest that the US would not like the ruling Awami League government to go overboard in its drive against pro-Pakistan elements who opposed the liberation struggle in the east and helped the army carry out a genocide.

While Bangladesh Home Minister Sahara Khatoon claimed that the US had pledged support to the government on the matter of trying war criminals, visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Robert O Blake gave the opposite impression at a separate press briefing.

Bringing the war criminals and Pak collaborators to justice was a major electoral plank for the Awami League in the polls which it swept recently. Foreign Minister Dipu Moni has been insistent that the trials be organised as soon as possible. She has been pressing for an official apology from Pakistan for its crackdown in Bangladesh, resulting in the death of an estimated 30,00,000 people.

Pakistan has indicated that while the 1971” developments “were” regrettable,” (words used by former president Pervez Musharraf during a visit to Dhaka in 2003), both countries should move on and not look back on the past. Indeed, the demand raised by Bangladesh may even create problems in bilateral relations, Pakistani leaders have said.

Mr. Blake's views as reported in leading Bangladesh media seemed to be more supportive of the Pak stand on this highly sensitive issue. Bangladesh should not “politicise the trials,” he was quoted as saying, with no explanations as to what would constitute in US views a “politicisation.”

Also, while welcoming the recently held free and fair national elections, Mr. Blake warned Bangladesh not to take any steps that would “weaken the cause of democracy, undermining the progress achieved so far.” He was speaking in the context of the war crimes.

Foreign affairs analysts based in Kolkata pointed out that it would have been difficult for the US to be too strongly critical of Pakistan and its establishment on the issue. Mr. Blake has only reiterated his country's known position on the 1971 liberation struggle. They pointed out that the US President at the time, Mr, Richard Nixon, had ordered the mighty US Seventh Fleet to patrol the Bay of Bengal, to make sure that India did not overrun what used to be Pakistan's Eastern province.

The American government never supported the war for liberation and sided totally with the ruling army establishment, which they regarded as a regional ally, well aware of the genocide that had continued for months. Also, the US and China were not among the first countries to recognise Bangladesh, unlike the Soviet Union and India.

Mr. Blake's comments, observers feel, suggest that it would be better for Bangladesh to let bygones by bygones, as suggested by Pakistan. Proceeding with the proposed trials, may make many establishment figures both in Pakistan and Bangladesh jittery and the stage could be set for another round of covert and overt political confrontation.

And the US commitment towards the well being of Pakistan in South Asia continues to be just as strong in 2009 as it was in the seventies, now that a new war is on against Islamic fundamentalists. It remains how the present US stance on the 1971 war crimes, which clearly sought to derail the struggle for independence, now impacts its diplomatic relations with Bangladesh. (IPA)