LAHORE, Jan 3: Four components of the MMA will decide here on Wednesday (today) whether opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman and NWFP Chief Minister Akram Durrani should attend the National Security Council meeting(s) or not.

The six-party religious grouping’s vice-president and Markazi Jamiat Ahle-i-Hadith amir, Senator Sajid Mir, will chair the discussion. Defunct Tehrik-i-Islami’s Allama Sajid Naqvi, Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan’s Gen K.M. Azhar and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Sami)’s Pir Abdur Raheem Naqshbandi are likely to participate.

Qazi Husain Ahmad and Maulana Fazl, leaders of the other two constituents of the alliance — the Jamaat-i-Islami and the JUI-F — had clashed on the issue during the last meeting of the MMA’s supreme council in Islamabad.

The council decided that the issue should be left to the other four components.

The MMA is of the view that the NSC meetings should be attended only when its composition is changed and the prime minister, instead of the president, should chair it.

The JUI-F, the largest component of the alliance as far as its parliamentary strength is concerned, differed on the policy but could violate it only once as all the decisions in the MMA are taken unanimously.

The only time it went against the NSC boycott policy was after Oct 8 earthquake when the NWFP chief minister, a nominee of the JUI-F, attended it in the name of effectively presenting the case of the quake victims belonging to the province.

The party’s leaders, however, said after the NSC meeting that the step proved futile.