My Mother — Page 103
Fulfilment of Dream (B) 103 Shaikh Amri Abedi was a zealous Ahmadi who had studied Islam at Rabwah and had dedicated himself to the service of the Faith. He was elected the first Tanganyikan Mayor of Dar-es- Salaam, became a Member of Parliament and was Commissioner of the Western Region at the time of my visit. Shortly after he was appointed Minister of Justice, he led the Tanganyikan del- egation to the Eighteenth Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Some time later he died of food poisoning. Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta and Milton Obote were among his pall-bearers. In Kampala I performed the opening ceremony of the beauti- ful Ahmadiyyah Mosque. In June 1963 I visited the U. S. S. R. at the invitation of its Foreign Minister, Mr. Gromyko. On my way I visited Copenhagen and Helsinki. In the U. S. S. R. I visited Leningrad, Moscow, Tashkent, and Samarkand. During the return journey I visited Warsaw, Prague, and Zurich, where I performed the opening ceremony of the Ahmadiyyah mosque. In Tashkent and Samarkand I was much struck with the cultural unity between Pakistan and Uzbekistan. I presume the same applies to the bulk of the southern Soviets. So much goodwill had, by Divine grace, been generated towards me during the Seventeenth Session of the General Assembly that in the middle of 1963, I began to consider whether there would be a reasonable chance of my election to the International Court of Justice in the triennial elections that were due to be held in the autumn of 1963. It so happened that of the five judges of the Court who were due to complete their terms of office on the Court in February 1946, three were Latin Americans. When the first elec- tions to the Court were held in 1946 there were fifty members of