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COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, August 5, 2001: Sri Lanka's influential Buddhist clergy have called for laws to ban Christian conversions, which are spreading in poverty-stricken rural villages, and vowed collective action against the practice. They have adopted an 11-point plan to fight proselytizers, active in several districts of the island, and called on the authorities to immediately pass laws to prevent conversions taking place under the cover of helping rural communities to improve their economic standards. They say a shortage of Buddhist monks in several temples is also allowing Christian priests to make inroads into the Buddhist heartland by converting farming communities. The monks say about 23,000 Buddhists are being converted to Christianity each year and proselytizers have targeted 5,000 out of the 25,400 villages in the country for their activities.