Pakistan's main alliance of Islamist ‘ parties was near collapse yesterday after cancelling a last-ditch meeting to resolve differences over a possible election boycott, party officials said.

The alliance was formed in 2002 and won control of North West Frontier Province on the back of fierce anti-US sentiment over the toppling of the Taliban in neighbouring Afglianistan.

But the six leading fundamentalist parties that constitute the alliance — the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) or United Action Front - are split over taking par t in the January 8 election amid fears that the pollswill be unfair.

"It is an alliance by name only," the alliance's chief, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, told Geo television.

"We are not dissolving it. We want relations to continue so that at some Imer stage we could sit together again, once the drama of the fraudulent election is over," he said. —-

"This election will strengthen the hands of dictatorship," said Ahmed, who heads the hardline Sunni Muslim )amaat-e-Islami (]1) party.

The principal division* is between JI, which wants a boycott, and the pro-Taliban Jamiat-Ulema-e-lslam (JUI), which favours taking part as it has a significant number of parliamentary seats.

JUI chief Fazlur Rehman said his party was making efforts to save the alliance.

"People have a good opinion about us, we have done well in North West Frontier Province (in 2002)," he told state television. "We are trying to save MMA."

Senior MMA leader Liaquat Baloch confirmed that a meeting of the alliance's supreme council scheduled for Tuesday had been called off, j