ICRC delegates carried out visits to places of detention in three countries. During each visit, the delegates talked in private with the detainees of their own choice. Reports on these visits are sent to the authorities concerned.

On the occasion of their European trip, Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress of Japan visited the Geneva headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross on 10 October 1971. Her Majesty the Empress, who is honorary president of the Japanese Red Cross, had expressed the wish to call at the ICRC during her visit to Switzerland.

The twenty-first meeting of the Neutral Commission appointed by the ICRC to examine applications by Polish nationals for compensation in respect of pseudo-medical experiments to which they had been subjected in Nazi concentration camps during World War II was held at ICRC headquarters in Geneva from 14 to 16 October 1971.

As already announced in International Review, the ICRC is organizing a second session of the Conference of Government Experts on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts for the spring of 1972, as it had not been found possible to deal fully with all the subjects at the first session and some topics had not even been broached. The experts had, therefore, unanimously recommended that the work begun at the last Conference should be pursued at a further meeting.

As we mentioned in a previous issue, General Yahya Khan, President of Pakistan, in an interview with Mr. V. Umbricht, member of the International Committee, on 26 July, gave his agreement to humanitarian action by the ICRC. The ICRC decided to send to East Pakistan Dr. Otto Lehner, Head of Delegation, and Mr. Nicolas Vecsey, Assistant Head of the Central Tracing Agency. They left Geneva on 19 August, their mission being particularly to organize, in co-operation with the Pakistan Red Cross, a service to trace the missing and to re-unite families.

This introduction will be heard on three continents for the first time on 23 November 1971. On that date, the ICRC will inaugurate a beamed transmission radio programme. The system will reach all countries along a predetermined line, in contrast to the system of circle transmission over 360 degrees reaching only countries near the transmission centre.