VHP ready for talks with minorities: Vedantham

Kochi, Sep 17: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) International Working President S Vedantham today said the VHP was willing to hold talks with organisations of a particular community, if the latter ended their ''prosleytisation activities.'' Addressing a press conference here, Mr Vedantham said the VHP did not support the violence in Mangalore and other areas of Karnataka in the past few days and blamed local missionary organisations for ''provoking'' the violence.

''The Union government should totally ban conversion by passing a legislation,'' he demanded.

He alleged that a local missionary organisation had distributed publications titled ''Navjeevan'' and ''Sathyadarshini'' in Mangalore and Kasaragod district of Kerala, which allegedly criticised gods and saints of the majority community.

This had provoked the people and led to a ''mass upsurge'' against places of worship, he claimed.

Declaring that the VHP did not promote or support violence, Mr Vedantham said the organisation was willing to hold talks with missionary groups provided they stopped their ''prosleytisation'' activities.

In Orissa also, the violence was provoked by the killing of Swami Lakshmanananda, who had been doing a lot of developmental works among the tribals. The VHP leader alleged that Maoists had been wrongly blamed for the swami's killing and the real culprits had not been caught.

Referring to the serial blasts in Delhi and other cities over the past few months, Mr Vedantham said the UPA government had proved to be ''inefficient and incompetent'' in dealing with the internal security situation.

The government's failure to hang terrorist Afzal Guru, convicted in the Parliament attack case, was indirectly encouraging subversive activities in the country, he claimed.

UNI