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NEW DELHI, March 20 (AFP) - The Indian prime minister Wednesday urged Hindu hardliners to defer their controversial campaign to build a temple on the site of a razed mosque as a court ordered daily hearings in the case to speed up the resolution of the dispute over who owns the land.

Government minister Uma Bharti said the prime minister had made the appeal as the federal government had to abide by a court decision into the disputed site in the northern town of Ayodhya which is claimed by both Hindus and Muslims.

"Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has asked the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP -- World Hindu Council) to defer the temple construction programme and wait for the court verdict," Bharti told reporters.

The VHP is a radical Hindu group which has been spearheading the campaign to build the temple and has links to Vajpayee's ruling BJP party. It has set a June 2 deadline to begin building the temple and says it will stick to it.

Bharti, who has herself been closely associated with the temple movement, flew to Ayodhya on Wednesday to meet top Hindu leaders including aging ascetic Ramchandra Paramhans and VHP president Ashok Singhal.

She said the government would do everything in its power to help bring about a peaceful solution to the dispute, but urged Hindu and Muslim leaders to make an effort to deal with the dispute outside the court.

The matter is currently in the hands of the courts, who must decide whether the land belongs to Hindus or Muslims.

Hindus believe it is the birthplace of their god Ram and that the 16th-century Babri mosque was built over it. In 1992 the destruction of the mosque by Hindu zealots led to Hindu-Muslim riots in which 2,000 people died.

The court hearing the ownership dispute Wednesday ordered daily hearings in the case. The government had filed a petition before a bench of the Allahabad High Court to take up daily hearings to resolve the case more quickly.

Tensions over Ayodhya have been extremely high recently because Hindu religious leaders held a token ground-breaking ceremony outside the disputed site on March 15 to symbolise the beginnning of construction.

India's Supreme Court had banned the activists from dedicating stones for the temple on the actual disputed site.

Sectarian violence in the western Indian state of Gujarat last month which killed 700 people was triggered by an attack on a train carrying Hindu activists back from Ayodhya.

Vajpayee's government has been plunged into crisis by the dispute, with both the opposition and allies criticising it over rising Hindu-Muslim tensions.

But Hindu nationalists within the BJP are also putting pressure on Vajpayee to side with the Hindu activists, saying the BJP came to power on the back of the temple campaign.

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