August 10, 2003	Sunday	Jumadi-us-Sani 11, 1424

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NEW DELHI, Aug 9: Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani said on Saturday the BJP would not “sacrifice” its government to meet the demands of hardliners campaigning for the building of a temple on the ruins of the Babri mosque.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has repeatedly demanded that the government pass a law to enable the construction of a temple in Ayodhya.

But Mr Advani said the government was “not ready to bring a legislation to create a division” in parliament.

The “VHP wants us to bring ... a legislation which will definitely not get passed in parliament,” Mr Advani was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency.

“It (the VHP) wants us to contest elections on this plank. We are not ready to sacrifice the government,” the deputy premier told reporters en route to the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.

The temple-building campaign was initially championed by the then-opposition BJP and Mr Advani still faces court charges for an alleged role in the mosque’s destruction.

But the BJP has sought to distance itself from the temple movement since coming to power in 1998.

Even though it has enough support to push most laws through parliament, the BJP

is aware it could lose some of its two dozen coalition partners if it is viewed as taking an aggressively “anti-Muslim” stance.

The dispute over the Babri mosque site is now before the courts.—AFP