Portrait of the Week— THE WEEK'S NEWS was overshadowed by
the sud- den death in Tashkent of the Indian Prime Minis- ter, Mr. Shastri—within hours of signing the de- claration in which he agreed to restore peaceful relations with Pakistan. On Wednesday morning, to traditional Hindu rites, and in front of a million people, his body was cremated in Delhi between the Red Fort and the Jumna river . . . only nine- teen months since Mr. Nehru's funeral on the same spot. Meanwhile in Lagos, following the savage mob violence which terrorised large sec- tions of the city—described in BBC newspeak as 'a weekend of political unrest'—the Commonwealth conference on Rhodesia got under way; it was re- ported that Mr. Wilson, in best House of Com- mons style, exploded the passionate demand of the. Prime Minister of Sierra Leone for force against the Smith regime. In Salisbury itself, the officials admitted that sanctions are beginning to take effect; and halfway across the globe in the Viet- nam war, there was still no response from Hanoi to the American peace offensive—nor did one seem likely.
Previous page
