HIGHLIGHTS: 'Another Lame Indian Excuse, ' Aziz Khan. ||BJP Backs Opposition Motion on Gujarat||Opposition Accuses BJP of Bias Towards Country's 120 Million Muslim Minority||STORY: Pakistan has dismissed India's allegations over fermenting riots in Gujarat describing them as another lame excuse. Aziz Ahmed Khan, Pakistan foreign ministry spokesman, told a news conference In Islamabad "Blaming Pakistan will really be one further lame excuse and nothing more than that". (Read photo caption).

Indian Home Minister L.K. Advani said India had evidence that Pakistan was trying to foment the violence in Gujarat, where more than 900 people -- mostly Muslims -- have been killed in two months in the country's worst religious riots in a decade.

India also accuses Pakistan of arming and sheltering Kashmiri nationalist fighters who are resisting India's rule in the disputed province, which is at the centre of a four-month military standoff between the nuclear neighbours. Pakistan has long denied those charges.

Advani claimed that India had succeeded in cornering Pakistan over what it says was Islamabad's support for terror groups after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

"But the violence in Gujarat... has given them an opportunity to come out of that corner," he said.

The on-going bloodshed in the troubled Eastern Indian State of Gujarat has caused a crisis for the nationalist-led government

GOVERNMENT BACKS MOTION OF REGRET ON GUJARAT VIOLENCE

Meanwhile, India's ruling Hindu nationalists on Monday backed an opposition parliamentary motion expressing anguish over deadly religious violence in Gujarat to avoid the embarrassment of losing a vote on the issue.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is accused of turning a blind eye to the sectarian violence, told parliament it was time to end political bickering and work for national reconciliation.
The ruling coalition lacks an upper house majority and faced certain defeat if the motion had gone to a vote. Last week, the BJP defeated an opposition censure motion in the lower house condemning its failure to stem the violence in Gujarat.

Opposition groups, who accuse the BJP of a deep-seated bias against the country's 120 million minority Muslims, said the government had compromised India's secular foundations by failing to protect the lives of minorities.

VIOLENCE RAGES ON

On Monday, troops patrolled the old quarter of Ahmedabad, the state's main city which has borne the brunt of the two-month-old communal violence.

"The city is calm, as violence-hit areas have been brought under curfew," a police officer said.

Two factory workers were lynched on Ahmedabad's outskirts on Monday, a police officer said. He said the dead men had not yet been identified.

In another incident, police said 10 people were injured when a crudely made bomb went off in a public transport bus in Lunavada, some 170 km northeast of Ahmedabad.

But the police said they did not believe the bomb related to the religious violence.

Eight people were killed in Ahmedabad at the weekend after Hindus objected to the return of some Muslims to their homes from a refugee camp, police said. Forty were injured.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Indian policeman watches a burning car in the Shahalam Tolnaka area of Ahmadabad, India, Sunday, May 5, 2002, after riots broke out in the area. Over 900 people, mostly Muslims, have been killed in two months of sectarian violence between Hindus in Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat. (AP Photo/Str)
- May 05 11:54 AM ET