H. E. Ambassador

Prakash Shah

Permanent Representative

Of India to the United Nations

235 E 43 St.

New York, NY 10017

New York, February 2, 1998

Esteemed Ambassador,

We are taking the liberty to write to you today to present our deep appreciation for your speech at the recent commemoration of Mahatma Gandhi's 50th anniversary here at the UN HQ.

What struck us in particular of your intervention, was your considering Gandhi the ultimate radical. We could not agree more on the qualification of radical, and we deeply believe - if we did not misunderstand the meaning of your speech - that the reasons which made you use such a definition, are very similar to the reasons that made us choose, precisely ten years ago, the image of Mahatma Gandhi as "the" symbol of our radical organization.

In fact, we considered that nobody else has ever been able to face the problems of the human dignity and freedom with the same radical concreteness of Gandhi, therefore we decided to link our concrete political actions, as well as our nonviolent identity, to the image of Gandhi himself.

The Transnational Radical Party is a non electoral political organization, granted with Category 1 (General) Consultative Status by the UN. TRP applies gandhian nonviolent methods in order to build an effective international rule of law to affirm the fundamental human rights for each and every individual regardless of their nationality.

Our current campaigns are on the universal abolition of the death penalty; the creation of a Permanent International Criminal Court; an antiprohibitionist revision of drug laws; the adoption of a neutral auxiliary language for international communication; freedom for Tibet; Democracy for China.

Moreover, we are in the process of finalizing a brochure on our organization, it will be our pleasure to send it to your Excellency as soon as possible, together with some literature on our nonviolent actions.

We look forward to establish a contact with you, in the meantime we remain

Very truly yours,

Marco Cappato Marco PerDuca

UN Representatives