INDIA: Baby Summit Meeting

Asia’s own cold war—between Pakistan and India—last week unexpectedly showed signs of thawing. The Kashmir issue still divides the two countries, but their quarrel over dividing the canal waters of the Indus Basin (TIME, June 1) seems to be heading for amicable settlement. At first, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had hard words for the government of Pakistan’s General Mohammed Ayub Khan (“a naked military dictatorship”). But Ayub’s incorruptibility, his undeniable popularity, and his own sensible willingness to patch things up with India has done a lot to diminish the enmities that grew out of the violent partition of India and Pakistan twelve years ago, when between half a million and a million people were killed.

At week’s end word came that General Ayub, in flying the 1,000 miles across India that divides West and East Pakistan, will make what is officially described as a “fuel stop” at the Indian capital of New Delhi on Sept. 1, and will have time enough for a chat with India’s Nehru, the first meeting of the two heads of state. One item that may well be discussed: General Ayub’s suggestion last spring that Pakistan and India get together for the joint defense of the Indian subcontinent, an idea that Nehru—confronted with Red China’s challenge on his northern borders —apparently no longer considers so outlandish as he once did.