NEW DELHI: It was meant to be a stage for peace organised by the Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA), but it seems to have had the opposite effect. With the group from Pakistan, "Tehrik-e-Niswan'', alleging that they were forced to leave earlier as some members of WIPSA had problems with the `anti-American' content of their play, officials of WIPSA claim that the reason for the spat was a "breach of trust''.

"We were invited by WIPSA to take part in "Staging Peace'', a theatre festival. The play that we performed had been directed by an Indian, Prasanna Ramaswamy, and it was a piece against war. After we performed the play in Lucknow, we got a standing ovation from the audience, but the organisers got very upset. One of them told us that they were embarrassed by the anti-American sentiment in the play as the programme was being funded by the Ford Foundation,'' alleged leader of the Pakistani group, Sheema Kermani, who was in the Capital recently to stage the play at the Nation School of Drama.

The dispute only became much more bitter as Ms. Kermani claimed that they were told to leave the country immediately.

"We were asked to leave India at once. When I said that we were going to stay in Delhi as I had some friends there, I was told that was not possible and we had to leave the country as we were on WIPSA visas. If we didn't, then they said that they would report us to the police. We were given our tickets at Lucknow airport to go to Karachi and the sticker on the ticket clearly said that we couldn't change the dates. They also called up the guest-house where we were staying in Delhi and got them to ask us to leave at midnight,'' she charged.

She further said that WIPSA also accused the group of performing the play for "monetary'' gain at the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) convention.

This incident also seems to have caused differences within WIPSA themselves. While some trustees claim that the Pakistani group was out of line, it has been learnt that Syeda S. Hameed and Nirmala Deshpande have apologised for the incident.

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