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dated June 18,1952: Chou En-lai's tribute

Premier Chou En-lai of China praised India's independent foreign policy and thanked Prime Minister Nehru for pursuing such a policy. The Premier was speaking at a farewell banquet which he gave to India's Ambassador, Sardar Panikkar, at Peking on June 14, an official account of which was released in New Delhi.

Proposing a toast to Mr. Nehru, Chou En-lai said Mr. Nehru's foreign policy had enabled the age-old friendship between India and China to be strengthened and developed on a new basis. He also thanked the Indian Prime Minister for choosing Sardar Panikkar as India's first Ambassador to New China and for sending Indian cultural delegation under the distinguished leadership of Mrs. Pandit. In another toast to Sardar Panikkar, Chou En-lai paid compliments to the skill, acumen and breadth of vision with which the Indian Ambassador had represented the Indian Government's friendly policy to China so faithfully.

In his speech Sardar Panikkar said that he deserved no credit, but had merely carried out the policy laid by Mr. Nehru. He also expressed his regret at having to leave such a friendly and hospitable country whose Government and people had cooperated with him so fully to lay a firm foundation of friendship between India and China on a new basis. This friendship was both old and new. It was old in history and new in the policies of the two governments that had made Sino-Indian friendship the bulwark of peace in Asia and the world.

The Ambassador remarked that it had been his heart's desire to make friendship between India and China enduring and lasting, a friendship which like a banyan tree had roots which were deep and which were continuously being renewed and whose branches spread out and lasted for hundreds of years.

The Ambassador proposed a toast to Chairman Mao Tse-tung whose understanding and sympathy had assured the success of the policy of friendship even under conditions which at first looked not promising.

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