"Home Minister L K Advani spoke to American Ambassador Richard Celeste on telephone yesterday and assured him of full protection to the embassy and its staff," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesman J P Mathur told reporters here today.

Delhi Police yesterday claimed to have foiled a diabolic plan by Inter-Services Intelligence-aided foreign mercenaries to blow up US consulates in Calcutta and Chennai and also carry out explosions in the Capital on the eve of Republic Day with the arrest of a Bangladeshi national and his three Indian contacts. "Though Pakistan is an ally of the US, the ISI's objective was to tarnish India's image before the world community," a top police official said.

Meanwhile, BJP asked the Centre to expedite the process of issuing a white paper on the ISIactivities in the country in order to expose the "real ugly face of Islamic terrorism sponsored from across the border" to the world.

In a statement here, Mathur said the ISI plot to bomb the American consulates was a matter of grave concern. Mathur expressed hope that Western governments would realise the folly of not looking beyond self-interest. "It is the silence of the West which is not bothered as long as it is not hurt," he said.

He urged the Western countries to act timely and respond to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's appeal to convene an international conference on tackling the menace of trans-border terrorism.

The BJP spokesman charged the Congress, Left and other parties with being interested only in electoral gains rather than national interest and alleged that they were mum on the increasing terrorists activities in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.