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| Wednesday, 7 January 2004 |
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Warming Pakistan ties will help BJP at polls: mahajan NEW DELHI, Tuesday (AFP) India's ruling Hindu nationalists will stress warming ties with rival Pakistan, highlighting the meeting between the two countries' leaders in parliamentary elections this year, party leaders said. Pramod Mahajan, general secretary of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said the normalisation drive with Pakistan "will help the BJP in the forthcoming general elections". "All peace-loving people in this country - Hindus, Muslims and others - would certainly appreciate the prime minister's efforts towards peace," Mahajan told The Hindu newspaper. Mahajan is credited with drawing up the strategy for the December 1 regional elections in which the BJP wrested control of three states from the main opposition Congress party. National polls are due before October, but BJP leaders have indicated they will call the vote early after the strong performance last month. BJP party president M. Venkiah Naidu welcomed the development. "The talks between the Prime Minister and the Pakistan President in Islamabad was a positive step in the right direction and we hope something concrete would emerge from it," he told repoters. Naidu said that the party would later come out with a detailed written comment about the India-Pakistan meetings. "A peace dialogue with Pakistan will be a very positive development for the BJP," party spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra said. "It will take the wind out of the sails of the secular front." He was referring to opposition parties, which accuse the BJP government of the western state of Gujarat of complicity in anti-Muslim riots in 2002 that left some 2,000 people dead. |
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