India: A Neutral Attitude

India's Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri had gone to Moscow with high hopes of a major diplomatic achievement. He came home last week with a good deal less.

Russia's fence-straddling new bosses, Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin, provided no public backing for India against Pakistan in the bitter Rann of Kutch controversy; not a word of support against the Chinese Communists, who for years have been nibbling at India's Himalayan borders; not even a clear-cut promise of more aid and trade. In fact, the Russians chided India for failing to use fully the aid already pledged—$1 billion, or roughly one-fifth of...

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