NEW DELHI, Feb 15: Most leaders of India's main opposition Congress believe the party is at a disadvantage ahead of polls because chief Sonia Gandhi was born in Italy but few want to replace her, a survey said on Sunday.

Twenty-eight of 40 top and middle-level Congress leaders polled for the English-language weekly Tehelka said Gandhi's foreign birth was a "liability" for the party. But 39 of the 40 Congress members said Gandhi, the widow of slain former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and heir to India's leading political dynasty, was the only person who could hold the party together.

"The truth is that the Congress party is still India's largest held private concern," one unidentified Congress leader was quoted as saying by the weekly.

Sonia Gandhi took over the reins of the Congress in November 1998 after a makeover into a sari-clad, Hindi-speaking Indian woman, but the ruling Hindu nationalists have repeatedly charged that only a native-born Indian should be prime minister.

The Congress, which led India to independence from Britain, is in its longest stint out of power, with the last Congress government completing its tenure in 1996. Twenty-six of the 40 leaders polled felt Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's BJP had replaced the Congress as the core national party. However, 37 of the respondents said Congress fortunes would rise if Gandhi's children Priyanka and Rahul take part in campaigning. -AFP