Muslims protest against Bush visit

TENS of thousands of Muslims and communists took to the streets across India yesterday protesting against the visit of US President George W Bush, hours before his arrival.

Mr Bush’s three-day visit to the world’s largest democracy, which is also Asia’s third-largest economy, has raised expectations in India as it sheds its socialist baggage and turns to the West to help it become a regional power.

However, it has also drawn the ire of leftist and Muslim groups who staged large protests in several cities across the country against Bush’s policies.

Mr Bush landed at Indira Gandhi international airport in the early evening after flying in from a surprise visit to Afghanistan.

About 100,000 Muslim men, many of them wearing prayer caps, gathered in a public ground in the heart of the Indian capital shouting anti-Bush slogans.

“Go back, Bush”, “Bush is a killer”, “Bully Bush, buzz off”, “Bush, stop the ambush”, they shouted as hundreds of policemen in riot gear kept watch.

“The people of the country do not want this killer of innocent men, women and children to come here,” one man said.

In the eastern city of Kolkata, a leftist stronghold, about 25,000 communist supporters converged on the city centre to take part in a public meeting organised by the Committee Against Bush Visit.

“Under President Bush, the US continues to occupy Iraq and oppress its people. It threatens Syria and has targeted Iran on the issue of its nuclear programme,” the committee said in a statement.

“The Indian Government is shamefully succumbing to US imperialist pressures,” it said.

Elsewhere, about 200 student communist activists burnt a straw effigy of Bush in the southern IT hub of Bangalore.

Washington and New Delhi hope Mr Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh will clinch a landmark civilian nuclear co-operation deal, seen as the centrepiece of the visit, at their talks today.

The deal, agreed in principle last July when Mr Singh visited Washington, has run into trouble over differences on nuclear-armed India’s plan to separate its military and civilian atomic plants to prevent proliferation, a key requirement.

However, both sides have tried to play down expectations even as they continue to discuss the number of reactors India will declare as civilian and open them up for international inspections.