FARIDABAD, April 2: In a tactical climb-down, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) said today that while it is committed to the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, it welcomes Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's offer of a ``negotiated'' settlement to the dispute.``We have never opposed negotiations,'' said a resolution adopted today by its governing council after a two-day meeting here. The resolution also skipped two crucial issues, scrapping of Article 370 from the Constitution and seeking legislation for a uniform civil code.Sources said the shift in the VHP's stance comes after its recent informal talks with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and some Bharatiya Janata Party leaders who argued against embarrassing the Vajpayee government. However, a vocal section within the council warned that the resolution would send a signal that the VHP has ``compromised on an issue around which it built an entire movement.''Apparently responding to these objections, VHP working president Ashok Singhal said,``Hindu society is determined to have a temple built in Ayodhya and it will abide by the directive of Hindu sants on the matter.'' A two-day sant sammelan is scheduled for April 9 in Haridwar to review today's resolution.When asked if the change in the VHP's approach was because of Vajpayee's ``consensus'' approach to governance, Singhal declined to comment, saying, ``We have talked to several Prime Ministers before and are open to any offer of dialogue.''The VHP also called upon all ``Hindus and peace-loving citizens of Tamil Nadu to organise themselves under the VHP to effectively check the activities of anti-national Islamic terrorists, stand solidly behind the central government and nationalistic forces in the state to foil the attempts of criminals to disrupt normal public life.'' It asked the Central government to take effective measures to check the activities of Islamic fundamentalists and order a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the Coimbatore blasts.The resolution also called forlegislation to ban conversions and cow slaughter and to scrap the Tehri Dam calling it ``anti-culture.'' It also demanded total ``decontrol'' of Mutts and mandirs from the government restoring them to ``Hindu societies and their representatives.''Sources said that construction work on the 32-feet-high temple is on. About 2.75 lakh cu ft stones are being carved in four workshops, one in Ayodhya and three in Rajasthan's Sirohi district.Forty out of 162 pillars for the temple are said to be ready and work on another 28 nearly complete. C K Sompura, designer of the proposed temple, inspected the site ten days ago in Ayodhya along with Singhal.
