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Vajpayee vows to settle Hindu-Muslim disputes

It was a saffron flag with a green tinge that fluttered in Kanpur on Friday as the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, campaigned for his party.

Stating that Muslims have discarded their ''adversaries's spectacles to look at the saffron party with their naked eyes'', Vajpayee promised that the BJP would resolve all the outstanding problems between Hindus and Muslims once it comes to power.

Kanpur has a sizeable Muslim population, and the 50,000-strong crowd at Phoolbagh in the city, where the meeting was held, had a considerable number of Muslims.

Referring to the fall in the value of rupee, Vajpayee said, ''We welcome foreign industries, but that does not mean that the small scale sector should be destroyed. We welcome liberalisation, but what happens to the poorest of the poor is more important. Nowadays cars, televisions and telephones are becoming cheaper and cheaper. But onions and tea are dearer.''

As for the Congress, he described it as a dead party. ''They say that Sonia has brought the sanjiwani (life-giving medicine). But it is useless as the party is dead.''

There was all-round criticism against the United Front 13-party combination which, according to Vajpayee, ''fought against each other, their own programmes and against the Congress and then against us.''

Vajpayee blamed Congress president Sitaram Kesri for bringing down the H D Deve Gowda government as the latter had ''initiated corruption charges against the Congress leaders''.

Meanwhile, minority leader and UP legislative council member Tanveer Hyder Usman, who joined the BJP along with his followers, said, ''We are not Babar's progeny, but Ram and Lakshman's children.''

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