Meanwhile India’s Vienna vote upsets Lucknow’s Shia clerics

The government, the Maulana said, has not only ‘‘buried the country’s non-aligned policy’’, but also ensured that now India was firmly in the US bloc.

Talking to reporters at a hurriedly convened press conference, Jawad said the Centre has ‘‘supported the US at the cost of the country’s Muslims’’. He said he will organise a conference of Muslim ulema and religious leaders after Moharram to mobilise public opinion against the Congress.

Saying that Congress had earlier been responsible for the Babri Masjid demolition, he pointed out that once again it has exposed its anti-Muslim character.

The government, he said, had claimed that the step had been taken in India’s interest, but this was just an alibi to push forward the US agenda. “Country’s interest does not mean violating the principles or the basic foundation of India,” he said.

Jawad defended Iran’s move to acquire nuclear capability on the same grounds that had prompted India to become an atomic power — the threat perceptions from China and Pakistan. “Iran’s position was similar, as it was surrounded by Pakistan, Turkey and Russia.”

Denying that Iran would have made the atomic bomb, the Maulana said the possession of the atomic bomb had been declared illegal in a fatwa by Iran’s religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

The chairman of Shia Central Board of Waqf, Mukhtar Anees, dubbed the UPA government as an “enemy of Muslims and agent of the USA”. Anees, a former Samajwadi Party MLA, fully backed chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s stand on the issue.

President of All India Muslim Forum, Nehaluddin, said the government’s decision had shown that the UPA is going to be a part of America’s ‘‘designs of lording over the other nations’’. “Like Indonesia, Algeria and aLibya, India should also have abstained from voting,” he said.

The president of Jamiatul Ulema-i- Hind, UP, Syed Wazeen Ahmed announced that the Jamiat would launch agitation in Lucknow and Delhi in protest against the coming visit of the US President, George W Bush.

The chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, meanwhile, said the Samajwadi Party will oppose the Centre’s decision to vote against Iran.

Addressing a meeting in Mainpuri, the CM slammed the UPA government’s move, saying that India has acquired the status of ‘‘a stooge’’. Without naming the US, the CM attributed the rise in terrorist activities to the sale of arms by ‘‘some nations’’.