Agha Hilaly

Born in Bangalore in 1911, Agha Hilaly entered the civil service at twenty-five and moved to Pakistan after partition in 1947. His diplomatic career took him to Stockholm, where he represented Pakistan in the Scandinavian countries, and then to Moscow with concurrent responsibility for Prague. He subsequently served in India and as high commissioner in London before becoming ambassador to the United States in 1966. ¹

Hilaly carried messages in the confidential exchanges that opened direct contact between the Nixon administration and China. On April 27, 1971, he delivered Zhou Enlai's invitation to Henry Kissinger: Beijing was prepared to receive an American presidential envoy, the secretary of state, or Nixon himself. Pakistan would help arrange the contact. ²

The same year he defended President Yahya Khan's government as the crisis in East Pakistan produced mass displacement and mounting criticism in Washington. In a July meeting with Kissinger, Hilaly described arrangements for UN personnel and a civilian administrator to facilitate refugees' return. He sought economic assistance, disputed the World Bank mission's descriptions of devastation, and asked the White House to influence Congress. Kissinger urged a coherent refugee program that could justify continued support. Hilaly's Washington appointment ended in 1971; he died in 2001. ^{3, 1}