Eisenhower-Nehru Talks End In Agreement

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28158, 22 December 1956, Page 11

Eisenhower-Nehru Talks End In Agreement

(Rec. 8 p.m.) WASHINGTON, December 20. President Eisenhower and the Prime Minister of India, Mr Nehru, said today that their private, informal talks here confirmed a “broad area of agreement.” on world problems.

In a joint communique issued at the end of Mr Nehru’s four-day State visit, the two leaders said that they reached a grater understanding which would advance peaceful and friendly relations among all nations. Mr Nehru told reporters as he left the airport for New York that his talks with Mr Eisenhower also would lead to closer bonds of the mind, bonds of understanding and of friendship between India and the United States. The 150-word communique, prob ably one of the briefest issued in Washington on a meeting of two top leaders', dealt in generalities and gave no details of the content of the talks. Officials said that this was done to preserve the informal atmosphere which has characterised the meetings between the two leaders. Mr Eisenhower and Mr Nehru talked privately for more than 14 hours on Monday in the quiet of the President’s Gettysburg farm. They met again at the White House yesterday and talked for more than an hour at a formal dinner at the Indian Embassy last night.

The communique said that these “full and frank talks” included “a wide range of problems of interest and concern to both countries.”

In New York, Mr Nehru said that it was a “gross exaggeration” for anyone to declare that great or vital differences existed between the United States and India.

“Sometimes, it is said that there are great differences between the United States and India in the international field or other fields.” the Prime Minister said at a lunch given in nis honour by the Mayor of New York (Mr Robert Wagner).

“This is greatly exaggerated ... it is a gross exaggeration,” he said.

“There are obviously sometimes differences in outlook or opinion, but I imagine that in the United States itself, and among the people here, there are differences.

“In India, I know that there are great differences of opinion . . . but the very nature of a democracy is that out of the clash of opinion, the truth emerges.

“It is one of the features of authoritarianism that opinions are not allowed to prevail.” The Prime Minister made an appeal for tolerance in the conduct of international affairs.

“In the history of India, that has been repeated again and again,” he said. “That is the background to our thinking to some extent. . . . “It is better to be friendly than inimical.

“It is better to win the enemy over, rather than keep him an enemy, not by giving up a principle but holding on to them while trying to win (him) over.”

He said that Gandhi was an example of this philosophy in his attitude to the British before India gained its indepedence in 1947. “We have no enmity against the British people.” Mr Nehru said. "The remarkable thing is that . . . we are

great friends with the British people.” Half an hour before Mr Nehru left Washington. Mr Eisenhower began a meeting at the White House with the National Security Council.

Mr Eisenhower also called Mr John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, to the White House this morning to analyse with him the results of his personal exchanges with Mr Nehru.

Official sources said that the impression was strengthening that Mr Nehru and Mr Eisenhower had drawn closer together in their general approach to world problems than any responsible official in Washington had dared to hope.

This is regarded as a matter of the highest significance—not only in the evolution of United States policy on pressing issues in Europe. Asia, and the Middle East, but in the prospects of preserving the world from a general war.

Diplomatic sources suggested that Mr Nehru may have been disappointed with the adamant United States stand against recognising Communist China Probably the only discordant note detected by observers in Mr Nehru’s visit was his reference to India’s stand on Hungary at his press conference. said a Reuter correspondent.

Mr Nehru had said that India had not joined in condemning the Soviet Union because India felt it better to make a constructive approach rather than a denunciation.