ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: A crucial meeting of the supreme council of the six-party Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal will be held on Monday in a bid to save it from breaking apart following decisions by the Jamaat-i-Islami and JUI-F to join hands with parties outside the alliance in the forthcoming election for Peshawar district nazim’s post.

The alliance is already faced with severe differences among its component parties on the question of whether the leader of opposition in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rehman and NWFP Chief Minister Akram Durrani should attend meetings of the National Security Council.

If all goes well and the widening differences between the two major component parties are resolved then the alliance will also discuss the possibility of joining hands with the other major opposition alliance, ARD, which is scheduled to meet in Lahore for launching an all-out movement against the government.

The MMA will also discuss the crisis it faces as a result of the Supreme Court’s directive to the Election Commission against declaring results of candidates who had contested local body elections on madressah sanads.

The alliance will also try to forge consensus on the question of madressahs’ registration and planned repatriation of foreign students.

Also on the meeting’s agenda is working out a strategy to give the government a tough time during the National Assembly session starting on Monday evening.

MMA president Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who will host the meeting at his residence, told Dawn on Sunday that differences between his party and the JUI-F in Peshawar were a direct result of non-party local body elections.

“The holding of non-party local government elections was unfortunate which resulted in creating gulf between parties and groups,” he said.

He evaded a question whether the alliance meeting would be able to overcome differences resulting from decisions by the JI and JUI-F to oppose each other in Peshawar.

When his attention was drawn toward the exchange of harsh statements by leaders of the two parties, he said “everything will be discussed in the supreme council meeting and resolved amicably”.

Insiders told Dawn that Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who was at the centre of controversy between the two parties as he and Chief Minister Akram Durrani have been supporting his old friend and close relative Haji Ghulam Ali for Peshawar’s coveted office, was likely to create some fissures in the meeting.

Qazi Hussain said he had talked to Maulana Fazl to cool down the temperature, adding that the supreme council meeting had been convened on his advice.

Asked about the agenda of the meeting, he said it would discuss the overall political situation in the country, particularly with reference to the recently concluded local body elections.

He said the alliance would ponder over the possibility of resuming talks with other opposition parties and finalizing the agenda for the September 4 national conference it had convened.

The national conference, he told this correspondent, would discuss the political scenario in the face of continued military interference in the political affairs of the country and to decide about formally requesting President General Pervez Musharraf and the armed forces to leave politics to politicians and concentrate on their constitutional duty of defending the motherland.

While Maulana Fazl was not available for comments on the MMA meeting, deputy parliamentary leader and deputy chief of JUI-F Hafiz Hussain Ahmed expressed the confidence that the alliance would successfully overcome the differences.

He confirmed that the supreme council would also discuss the proposed resumption of talks with the ARD over forging a grand alliance which, he said, had been stalled due to lack of interest on the part of PPP Parliamentarians.