Almost 60 delegates from the USA, UK, Holland, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Philippines and Canada will attend the seventh international conference of the War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns (WTR and PTC), the first time that the conference is being held in the Asian subcontinent.

The agenda of the conference includes ``peace problems in the Indian subcontinent in the light of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan'', ``Tibetan problem and its non-violent solution'', ``lobbying for peace tax legislations'' and ``the future of Mahatma Gandhi's ideas and works in India''. The conference will be inaugurated by Gerald Drewett from the UK.

Nirmala Deshpande, MP, will be the guest of honour at the conference which will be presided over by Omesh Saigal, Chief secretary, Government of Delhi.

Prominent among those who are expected to participate are the secretary general, conscience and peace tax international, Belgium, Dirk Panhuis, European coordinator of Gandhi-in-action, Riccardo Gramegna and Eva Parell of the Quakers Group, Sweden.

The basic objective of the WTR and PTC movement is to build worldwide public opinion against the armaments and wars and military expenditures that runs into billions and billions of dollars thereby depriving the teeming millions of their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. The movement firmly believes that war is a crime against humanity and tries to gain recognition of the fundamental human right to object to military taxes.

More than 50,000 ``conscience objectors'' to military expenditures, who are active members of this movement, mostly in the developed countries, have been resisting the payment of war taxes and have been facing police actions, court cases and confiscation of their personal belongings by the local civic authorities.