BJP to cash in on warming ties with Pakistan in polls

Pramod Mahajan, general secretary of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said the normalisation drive with Pakistan "will help the BJP in the forthcoming general elections".

"All peace-loving people in this country -- Hindus, Muslims and others -- would certainly appreciate the prime minister's efforts towards peace," Mahajan told The Hindu newspaper.

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Mahajan is credited with drawing up the strategy for the December 1 regional elections in which the BJP wrested control of three states from the main opposition Congress party.

National polls are due before October, but BJP leaders have indicated they will call the vote early after the strong performance last month.

Vajpayee met Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Monday on the sidelines of a seven-nation summit in Islamabad in the two leaders' first talks since 2001.

"A peace dialogue with Pakistan will be a very positive development for the BJP," party spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra said. "It will take the wind out of the sails of the secular front."

He was referring to opposition parties, which accuse the BJP government of the western state of Gujarat of complicity in anti-Muslim riots in 2002 that left some 2,000 people dead.

The BJP came to power in 1998 in part on a national-security platform, and one of its initial moves was to declare India a nuclear power.

In the last elections in 1999, the BJP was re-elected on the back of a patriotic surge after Indian troops battled Pakistan-backed militants who had taken control of mountain heights in Kashmir's Kargil region.

Vajpayee in April announced a new drive to improve relations with Pakistan after a near war over Kashmir in 2002. The two countries have resumed diplomatic and transport links and entered a November 26 ceasefire on their borders in Kashmir.