Nehru’s Visit To Moscow

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27678, 7 June 1955, Page 11

Nehru’s Visit To Moscow

(Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, June 6. The Prime Minister of India . (Mr Nehru) said in Cairo last night on his way to Moscow that he had no special problems to discuss with Russia's leaders, but would raise the question of world peace and how best to lessen international tension.

He would also study the operation of Russia’s five-year plan. He talked with the Egyptian Prime Minister, Lieutenant-Colonel Gamal Nasser during a 75-minute stay in Cairo.

Mr Nehru told reporters he would establish contacts for future trade and economic relations between India and all the countries he visited on his European tour. On the way to Moscow he is visiting-Czechoslovakia, and on the way home he will visit Poland, Austria and Jugoslavia. The “New York Times" said today that any accomplishments that might be achieved by the forthcoming visit to Moscow of Mr Nehru, would be problematical. But the newspaper also advised against the presumption that Mr Nehru could do no good, or that he would be completely bemused by Soviet blandishment.

“Mr Nehru has a mind of his own, and it is a good one. What has damaged the prestige of Mr Nehru in this country is what has seemed to be the habit of equating the Soviet Union and the United States as equally undesirable centres of power,” said the “New York Times.’’ , “He wishes to be ‘neutral’ in the cold war struggle. and the result is an aspersion on the outlook and aspirations of the free “Mr Nehru is not a Communist. He is not a totalitarian. He is a philosophic idealist, and an important one. “He is the acclaimed leader of more than 300,000,000 Indians. “He can play an important part in the resolution of some of the problems with which we are confronted. He needs to be better understood in this country, and we think we are not wrong in suggesting that he needs, also, better to understand what is the basic temper of the* United States.”