February 6, 2003	Thursday	Zul Hijjah 4,1423

WASHINGTON, Feb 5: Renowned Indian film director Mahesh Bhatt has refused an invitation to attend the 51st National Prayer Breakfast meeting with President George W. Bush in Washington on Thursday.

Bhatt says he has done so to protest Bush’s pro-war policies.

“It occurs to me, on second thought, that participating in such sessions with the president is to condone Bush’s terrorism of demonic proportions around the globe,” Bhatt said in a letter sent to a friend in Washington which was made available to the press on Wednesday.

America’s “bullying ways” must come to an end, said Bhatt, noting, “America has entered one of its worst periods of historical madness.”

“Bush and his junta have succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein. It is perhaps one of the most clever eye-wash exercises that the government has achieved to date with the help of their awesome propaganda machinery,” he wrote in the letter.

“... What is at stake here is not an “axis of evil”, but oil, money and people’s lives,” said Bhatt, observing that the comparison between Saddam and US or Britain is like that of an ant to an elephant.

Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he has still got them, will be peanuts compared to the stuff Israel or America could hurl at five minutes notice. And the effect could be beginning of the end of the world, warns Bhatt.