Did Zulfikar Ali Bhutto really tear up the UN resolution?

Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, during a meeting at the Bilawal House in Karachi on Sunday, tore up the show-cause notice received by the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), an alliance of opposition parties.

A spokesman of Bilawal House confirmed to Independent Urdu reporter Amar Garu on condition of anonymity that ‘if there was no truth in this incident, we would have denied it by now.’

People on social media are comparing it to Bilawal’s grandfather Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s alleged act of tearing up the UN resolution in 1971.

The incident of ‘tearing up the resolution’ by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has apparently become a part of our folk history and every day there is some comment on it, but these comments are also divided into two groups. On the one hand, there are those who call the demolition of Qarada as Bhutto’s ‘achievement’, in which he expressed national pride, while on the other hand, many people strongly criticize it and its loss to Pakistan in 1971. Cause of.

Two days ago, I read this article in an online newspaper:

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s speech at the United Nations Security Council. In which he tore up the ceasefire resolution presented by Poland and which is still proudly presented as an achievement of Mr. Bhutto. The fact is that Mr. Bhutto tore up this resolution and sealed the separation of East Pakistan.

Bhutto also had the option to accept the ceasefire under the Polish resolution, which was signed by representatives of 140 countries of the world, and save Pakistan from disintegration, but he tore up this resolution. He swept away his nationalism but lost half the country.’

There is also video of the incident, which can be viewed here:

But the question is whether the paper that Bhutto tore and which can be seen in the video was really the draft of the resolution?

Stanley Wolpert has written Bhutto’s biography ‘Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan’ after extensive research. It is recorded in this book that the papers which Bhutto tore on 15th December were his notes.

Senior journalist Azim M Mian, who has been reporting from New York for some time, has also shed light on this incident.

In a column for Jang newspaper on 9 June 2012, he writes:

If a member state formally submits a written draft resolution, statement or position, it becomes part of the United Nations record. Even if the draft is subsequently withdrawn, amended or cancelled, the first draft remains on record. I went through the United Nations records in great detail and tried hard to find the Polish resolution regarding East Pakistan, but till date the draft of the Polish resolution in 1971 has not been found in the records of the Security Council.’

Not only this, there are also eyewitnesses to the incident. Here are Associated Press of Pakistan journalist Iftikhar Ali Chaudhry who was present at the United Nations that day. Azim M. Mian writes that Iftikhar Sahib told him that the papers that late Bhutto had torn in the Security Council were the notes of his own speech because when he walked out of the Security Council in protest, Iftikhar Ali Sahib told the late Bhutto. said that if the draft of his speech is found, he should make it a news and send it.

In response, the late Bhutto said that instead of writing a speech, he had written notes by hand and tore them up in the hall of the Security Council. On this, Iftikhar Ali went to the hall of the Security Council and picked up the pieces of the torn notes and folded them and read them and sent them as news.

Azim Mian comments on this that ‘if Iftikhar Ali Sahib had known that these notes would take the form of a Polish resolution when they reach Pakistan, then he would have saved the notes written by the late Bhutto.’