In a joint communique dated December 2, 1955, U.S. Secretary of State Dulles and Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Cunha condemned statements made by Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Soviet Party Chairman Nikita Khrushchev during an eighteen-day tour of India. Of particular interest was the communique's reference to "Portuguese provinces in the Far East". This phrase referred to Goa, a Portuguese colony in western India. Although most European nations with holdings near India had granted them to the new independent nation in 1947, Portugal refused to surrender Goa, and the region had become a source of conflict between the two nations. The joint communiqué seemed to indicate U.S. recognition of Portuguese sovereignty in Goa, which undercut Cooper's assurances to the Indians of U.S. neutrality in the matter. Cooper himself did not know about the communiqué until he read an account of it in the Indian media and was therefore unprepared to offer an explanation for it when asked by the Indian Foreign Secretary. Cooper's cable to Washington, D.C. about the matter was reported to have been "bitter", although the contents of the cable have not been released.