Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will attend for a day the Bharatiya Janata Party's chintan (brainstorming) session near Mumbai from June 17 to 20.

BJP spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told reporters in New Delhi today that 26 other national leaders of the party, including several central ministers, will attend the session.

The meeting, according to Naqvi, will discuss party affairs and deliberate on the plans for the general election scheduled to be held next year.

BJP sources later revealed that the meeting will debate the pros and cons of contesting the next Lok Sabha election on the party's own agenda rather than that of the National Democratic Alliance.

Referring to the prime minister's statement calling for depoliticisation of the Ayodhya dispute, Naqvi said it was a positive gesture to resolve the discord, but unfortunately some organisations were opposing it.

Without naming anyone, Naqvi said talks are going on with some groups to find a solution to the dispute and are likely to yield a result soon.

Claiming that both the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Muslim organisations would be involved in the effort to resolve the tangle, he asserted that the religious sentiments of neither community would be hurt.

An early solution to the Ayodhya discord would facilitate the socio-economic uplift of both communities, he said.