NU to settle PKB dispute next week

NU to settle PKB dispute next week

SURABAYA: Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) will help settle the dispute
between two warring groups of the National Awakening Party (PKB),
which it established prior to the 1999 general election.

NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi said on Wednesday there would be a
meeting of the organization's legislative and executive body in
Pati, Central Java next Monday.

"It will be a meeting of NU leaders, a similar forum that
established PKB in 1999," Hasyim said in Surabaya.

He said NU decided to help settle the prolonged leadership
feud as it may divide NU supporters in next year's election.

The party split into two factions in the last days of former
president Abdurrahman Wahid, the PKB patron, in 2001. One faction
is led by Abdurrahman's loyalist Alwi Shihab, the other by Matori
Abdul Djalil, a supporter of Abdurrahman's successor incumbent
President Megawati Soekarnoputri.--Antara