The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Islamabad

Pakistan's main alliance of Islamist parties was near collapse Tuesday 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 Afghanistan.

But the six leading fundamentalist parties that constitute the alliance -- the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) or United Action Front -- are split over taking part in the January 8 election amid fears that the polls will 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 later 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 Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party.

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