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Peace at what cost, asks VHP

By Our Special Correspondent

JAIPUR MAY 31. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has denounced India's latest peace initiatives with Pakistan. "Peace at what cost? We have the bitter experience of 56 years dealing with Pakistan. Improving the relations at the cost of India is not acceptable," Acharya Dharmendra, member of VHP's Margadarshak Mandal, said here today.

Addressing a press conference, he accused the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, of ignoring the country's interest in order to make peace with Pakistan.

"He is after the Nobel Prize for Peace,'' Acharya Dharmendra said. The VHP would not mind if Mr. Vajpayee got a Nobel Prize for his poetry, but not for his peace initiatives, he added.

The BJP too came in for strong criticism from Acharya Dharmendra, who is on an anticipatory bail till June 16 after arrest warrants were issued against him for making inflammatory statements at a "trishul diksa" programme in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan last month. "It is not new for the BJP to change its identity too often. Whenever they did it in the past the party suffered too," he said.

"It is rank opportunism to tell that Ram mandir would not be an issue in the next elections. If Ram mandir and Hindutva are not issues for the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, the party would fare in the coming Lok Sabha elections as it did in the recent Himachal elections,'' he warned.

"Sans Hindutva, the BJP is without its `atma' (soul),'' he said, describing the BJP as the "spoilt child" of the Sangh Parivar.

The VHP would support candidates who are willing to give in writing their faith in Hindutva and the Ram mandir movement, irrespective of their party affiliations in the next Lok Sabha elections.

The four points which should be accepted by such candidates are: support for building a Ram mandir at Ayodhya, a common civil code, cow protection and the concept of an integrated India which included the whole of Kashmir.

The VHP leader asked the Congress not to take pride in arresting a person like Praveen Togadia for distributing trishuls.

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