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India's BJP vows

to keep nuclear option

if elected

NEW DELHI: India's Hindu opposition nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said on Sunday that, if elected this month, it would retain an option to make nuclear weapons.

The party said it would welcome foreign investors but not in soft consumer products such as fast food. But it would not seek to ban them or drive existing firms out.

"The BJP will re-evaluate the country's nuclear policy and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons," it said in its manifesto for a general election beginning on April 27.

"Though the BJP stands committed to a nuclear-free world, we cannot accept a world of nuclear aparthied," it said, adding that it would not support a test ban treaty championed by Western countries unless they also agreed to scrap nuclear arms.

India exploded a nuclear device in 1974 and the Congress party government has said New Delhi will use nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes. The BJP has never held power at federal level.

The BJP said it welcomed foreign investment because it believed it would bring knowledge and technology.

To achieve its objective of self-reliance, it pledged to set priorities for investment by foreign firms.

"As for multinational corporations in consumer non-durables, we do not consider them a priority," said the party, which has in the past frowned on foreign soft drinks firms such as PepsiCo, and said it welcomed computer chips, not potato chips.

Largely echoing the Congress party's economic reforms initiated by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, the BJP backed privatisation and said state-owned firms would remain only to promote social objectives or where security was involved.

It defined limits for the market: "The market may ensure growth, but it cannot ensure redistributive equity and justice. The state continues to have a role to play."

The manifesto added: "A modern India, to the BJP, is not a Westernised India."

The party reaffirmed its promise to build a temple at a disputed spot in Ayodhya, where a mediaeval mosque was razed by Hindu zealots in 1992.

The BJP became the main opposition party in 1991 with the same promise, wooing Hindus who believed the location to be the birthplace of the god-king Rama.

The party reiterated its promise of a civil code that would enshrine womens' property and guardianship rights and end polygamy and discrimination.

The party said it would ban foreign financing of religious and missionary organisations.

It stuck to its stand of abolishing special constitutional status for the predominantly Moslem state of Jammu and Kashmir, where more than 20,000 people have been killed in a six-year-old separatist revolt.-Reuter