AMRITSAR, Nov 18: Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Sunday called for an early end to the US-led war on Afghanistan so that refugees could begin to return to their homes and a programme of reconstructing the country could be launched immediately.

Speaking here at a political gathering Mr Vajpayee also suggested that a new government in Kabul would be set up “with the help of everyone”, and hoped that the remaining Taliban bastion, the city of Kandahar, too would soon fall to the Northern Alliance forces.

“The question now is how to return the refugees back to Afghanistan as well as begin reconstructing the country,” Vajpayee said. “That is why I am suggesting that the war should end quickly.”

The prime minister also referred to the liberation of Kabul and other Afghan cities from the Taliban rule in the last one week by the advancing forces of the Northern Alliance.

“Did you see the smiling children on the streets of Kabul? Did you see young girls breathing freely and easily on the streets of that city? They did not want a regime that preached hatred in the name of Islam and called for a Jihad. Religion is to free and not enslave.”

Vajpayee’s trip to this city, the spiritual capital of the Sikhs, virtually launched the election campaign of the alliance between his Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiromani Akali Dal, which rules Punjab where assembly elections are due in February.