a day ago
June 14, 1985, Forty Years Ago: PM Calls For Peace
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi made an appeal for peace and disarmament and regretted that concessional assistance for developing countries was drying up at a time when it was needed most. Gandhi voiced India's concern over the establishment of military bases in various parts of the world. 'We are directly affected by militarisation of the Indian Ocean and inflow of increasingly sophisticated arms into our neighbourhood,' she said.
AT LEAST 37 people were killed and about 100 injured, 48 of them seriously, when the Bilaspur-bound Chhattisgarh Express collided with a goods train at Raja Ki Mandi station near the Agra Cantonment. Union Minister of State for Railways Madhavrao Scindia rushed to the site of the accident and also visited the hospital to see the injured. Most of the dead and injured were army personnel.
SINHALESE HAVE ATTACKED some predominantly Tamil villages in eastern Sri Lanka, killing more than 40 people in 10 families. The attacks were in retaliation for a Tamil separatist attack on a Sinhalese village in the east. A reliable source in Jaffna said that Sinhalese, since then, had launched reprisal attacks on Tamil villages in and around Muttur on the east coast, killing 10 families. Thousands of people have fled their homes.
THE US HAS decided to provide advanced military technology and weaponry in an effort to end the 20-year hiatus in US military sales to the world's largest democracy. The Washington Post reported that the new policy was conditional on Indian acceptance of strict safeguards. PM Rajiv Gandhi and Defence Minister P V Narasimha Rao will discuss the supply of US military technology to India with Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger and John Messey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
