ISLAMABAD June 23: A scheduled meeting of MMA’s supreme council was abruptly cancelled on Thursday amid reports of deepening differences between its two main components, the JUI (F) and the Jamaat-i-Islami. Reporters who had been told at 10am that the meeting would take place at 6pm were informed at around noon that it had been cancelled.

Informed sources said that the cancellation came as a result of some hard talk between the alliance president Qazi Hussain Ahmed and secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman in Peshawar on the question of attending the National Security Council meeting as well as Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani’s election as chairman of a National Assembly committee.

Qazi Hussain, the sources claimed, lodged a strong protest on the assumption of a house committee chairman’s office by a senior MMA leader from Balochistan without seeking the leadership’s consent.

MMA’s deputy secretary general Liaquat Baloch, however, said the cancellation was a mutually agreed decision between Qazi Hussain and Maulana Fazl.

He said since the NSC issue did not need immediate attention, the MMA leaders decided to postpone the meeting.

Most of the supreme council members had already arrived in Islamabad for the meeting.

Mr Baloch said that both the top MMA leaders had a meeting at CM’s dinner in Peshawar last night in which the decision was mutually taken.

He said one of the reasons for postponement was that there was no immediate issue to be discussed since the leadership meeting was basically to be summoned to debate the National Security Council (NSC) and the forthcoming local bodies’ polls.