Blitz Bureau
PRIME Minister Narendra Modi has expressed condolences following the death of former US President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on December 29. In a post on X, PM Modi said, “Deeply saddened by the passing of former USA President Mr. Jimmy Carter. A statesman of great vision, he worked tirelessly for global peace and harmony.”
“His contributions to fostering strong India-US ties leave a lasting legacy. My heartfelt condolences to his family, friends and the people of the US,” he added. Carter died on Sunday at the age of 100 at his home in Plains, Georgia. He had been suffering from an aggressive form of melanoma, a skin cancer.
President Carter, a Democrat, served one term from 1977 to 1981 and was voted out of office despite such accomplishments as the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, which proved to be insufficient to overcome the disappointment over a slumping economy at home and the Iran crisis abroad.
He went on to carve out an extraordinary post-presidency life and won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002. The prize citation said, “His decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”. Carter was the third US President to visit India, after Dwight Eisenhower in 1959 and Richard Nixon in 1969.
He was accompanied on this visit in 1978 by the first lady, Rosalyn Carter, who later died in November 2023 at 96. Carter had met then President Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy and Prime Minister Morarji Desai and addressed the Parliament. A village he had visited then in Gurugram (then Gurgaon) was named Carterpuri and retains that name.
