N.Z. flags at half-mast

Press, 2 November 1984, Page 1

N.Z. flags at half-mast

PA Wellington The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, accompanied by Mrs Lange, left yesterday morning to fly to India for the funeral tomorrow of the Indian Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, assassinated on Wednesday. The High Commissioner to India, resident in New Zealand, Mr David McDowell, and members of the Prime Minister’s staff will also attend.

Flags would be flown at half-mast on all New Zea-

land public buildings today as a mark of respect to Mrs Gandhi, said the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Tapsell, yesterday. The Leader of the Opposition, Sir Robert Muldoon, said he had not been invited to travel to India with Mr Lange, although it was usual for an Opposition

.member to be invited on such occasions with the offficial Government party. “If he had invited me I would l have gone, because I knew Mrs Gandhi very well,

particularly in the last few years,” Sir Robert said. An invitation was “just a natural courtesy but I don’t want to make a big thing of it,” he said. • The leader of the Social Credit Party, Mr Beetham, has expressed his party’s shock at the news of the assassination.

The assassination was a tragedy for India, said its Acting High Commissioner to New Zealand, Mr Lalphlamuong Keivom, yesterday.

Mrs Gandhi’s death was not only a loss for India but a loss for democracy, said Mr Ashok Bhasin, a spokesman for Wellington’s large Indian community. “Many Indians will feel they have lost a member of their own family in spite of being so far away from India,” he said. Mr Lange said he hoped that the Indian people would take stock of the assassination and decide that violence would not prevail.