Gandhi Has Talks, Private Dinner With Gorbachev
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had two hours of talks Thursday with Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and then was apparently invited home for a private dinner with his Soviet host, Indian sources said.
The only other world leader Gorbachev has welcomed so personally is British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom he invited to a private dinner on the last night of her Moscow visit in March.
The official Soviet news agency Tass said Gorbachev and Gandhi continued their talks “in the evening during a friendly meeting in a narrow circle.”
It said the earlier formal discussions of international and bilateral issues in the Kremlin were held in an “atmosphere of mutual understanding and amiability.”
Gandhi, accompanied by his wife Sonia, arrived in Moscow on Thursday for a two-day visit.
He is in Moscow to inaugurate a yearlong, multimillion-dollar Indian cultural festival. He plans to attend opening ceremonies today after another meeting with Gorbachev and a meeting with Soviet Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov.
The Communist Party newspaper Pravda billed the trip as a “major step in the consolidation of friendship and all-round cooperation beween the Soviet Union and India.”
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