NEW DELHI, India, July 10, Reuter: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi leaves Delhi on Monday for a 10day tour of four Nations aimed at reviving a dormant nonaligned movement and expanding his country’s trade, diplomatic sources said on Sunday.
Gandhi will open his tour with a three day trip to Jordan, and then visit Yugoslavia from Wednesday to Friday, Spain from Friday to Sunday and return home via Turkey.
The tour, coming after last month’s visits to Syria, West Germany, the United Nations and Hungary, could be among his last before general elections due by the end of 1989.
Gandhi has already given up his external affairs portfolio to key aide Narasimha Rao, saying after a cabinet reshuffle last month that this freed him to devote more time to internal affairs.
But the diminishing role of the nonaligned movement, whose founders include Gandhi’s grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, and India’s need to raise exports to overcome a foreign exchange crunch, prompted him to undertake the tour, the diplomatic sources said.
The sources said the movement had ceased under its current chairman, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, to exert the influence: it did under Gandhi’s predecessor and mother, Indira.
Gandhi was seeking ways to regain the influence the movement enjoyed under his mother’s chairmanship, they added.
India is a firm supporter of the Palestinian cause in the Middle East and has in the past made efforts to mediate a settlement between Iran and Iraq, both members of the nonaligned movement.
In Amman, Gandhi is expected to reaffirm support for the Palestinians and discuss with King Hussein Jordan’s bid to host the movement’s next summit meeting, a move that is challenged by Indonesia, the sources said.
The host becomes movement chairman for the next three years.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 15, 1988
