CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt's tiny parliamentary opposition yesterday condemned as anti-democratic the suspension of the country's sole Islamist party, months ahead of legislative elections.

The neo-liberal Al-Wafd, the leftist Tagamu, and Arab-Socialist Nasserist parties, which account for 11 of the 454 seats in parliament, all denounced Saturday's decision to freeze the Islamist-led Labor Party's activities.

Labor's newspaper Al-Shaab, which has been accused of fomenting student unrest, was also temporarily closed under the decision which the authorities said was needed until an internal power struggle is resolved. "These measures are against legitimacy and democracy," Al-Wafd chairman Fuad Serageddin was quoted as saying in his party newspaper by the same name.

Also condemning the government move were Al-Arabi, the Nasserist party weekly, the Tagamu party, and the Muslim Brotherhood, an ally of Labor which is illegal but partly tolerated. "Reducing the thin enough margin of democracy that exists by such decisions is neither in the interests of stability nor those of the people nor the government itself," the Brotherhood said in a statement.

In announcing its decision, the government Parties Committee said it would not recognize any Labor Party factions until the rift is resolved, "whether via the courts or via an amicable agreement." The ruling came just months ahead of parliamentary elections which are expected to take place across Egypt in October or November.

Factions are backing two different candidates for party chairman against the existing one, Ibrahim Shukri. The party's Secretary General Adel Hussein, a Shukri supporter who has alleged the security services orchestrated the split as a pretext for a crackdown, appealed Saturday for support from other opposition parties.

"We will see how we will resist politically, but it should be a collective resistance with the other parties, because if we are eaten today, the others will be eaten tomorrow," Hussein, also a journalist for Al-Shaab, told AFP.

The party split followed accusations in Egypt's government press that it was using Al-Shaab to incite students at Cairo's Al-Azhar university to protest the republication of an allegedly blasphemous novel by Syrian writer Haidar Haidar.

Some 50 students were injured in clashes with police last week when protests against the book turned violent and more than 100 were arrested, though they were later released. In an apparent bid to calm things, the government decided to send five injured students for medical care in Germany while the Interior Minister said that the students were simply expressing their viewpoint, newspapers reported.

The Labor Party started out as a socialist-orientated movement when it was founded in 1979, but allied itself with the Brotherhood for the 1987 parliamentary elections and formally adopted an Islamist line at its general congress in 1989.

Labor has one member in parliament, which is dominated by President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party. The 13th opposition member of parliament represents Al-Ahrar, which is close to the Islamists. Fourteen other MPs are independents, while the government names 10.

The Journalists Union met yesterday to discuss the implications of the ban on Al-Shaab, which it denounced as "collective punishment" against all the newspaper's reporters.

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