AUCKLAND, New Zealand: Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, left for Thailand after three day visit of New Zealanders.
Gandhi, the first Indian leader to visit the country for more than a decade, flew out of Auckland for Bangkok, the last stop on a four nation tour which also included Indonesia and Australia,
Indian and New Zealand officials told Reuters his regarded as an outstanding success.
Normally reticent New Zealanders gathered to watch Gandhi wherever he stopped during the official visit and waved as he drove by.
After a day in which Gandhi turned tourist, Prime Minister David Lange told reporters they had strengthened their existing friendship,
Both men, who are in their early 40s, constantly praised each other in public, called each other by their first names and were photographed laughing together.
Lange said today he was closer to Gandhi emotionally than any other commonwealth leader.
“IS a question of age, a question how often we have met, and an outlook which has been tempered by the same sorts of experiences,” Lange said,
“He is a Prime Minister with whom I can speak and who does not address me as if am some sort ‘of public rally”.
Lange spoke in Ngarua wahia, a small town in the Central North Island and a center of Maori culture.
Gandhi spoke briefly in Maori to the hundreds of people who turned out to see him, and rubbed noses with Maori elders in a traditional “Hongi” greeting.
It was a contrast from a formal reception in Auckland the previous evening, when he had been warmly applauded by businessmen and politicians after explaining India’s membership of the nonaligned movement.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 24, 1986
