NEW YORK: US President Gerald Ford warned ... that prospects for war in the Middle East are very, very serious. An interview published in `Time` magazine quoted the President as adding that the seriousness `increases every day that we don`t get some action for further progress in the settlement of some of those disputes`. In the interview, he also declined to give Israel a guarantee ...

and said: `We have to judge what is in our national interest above any and all other considerations.` He also said that he backed the view expressed by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who ... refused to rule out the use of force in the Middle East if the `free` or industrialised world faced strangulation. News agencies [Meanwhile, as reported by news agencies from Lahore,] Mir Afzal Khan, Federal Minister for Commerce, has categorically stated that no drastic revision of import policy was under Government consideration and people in trade and industry should not pay attention to any rumour, whatsoever, in this connection. ... The Minister observed that since there [were] no abnormal imports, the Government had no intention to tighten up the present liberal character of the import policy.