Jakarta – Embattled Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid Friday again threatened to declare a state of emergency if a hostile parliament tries to impeach him in three weeks time.

"If that happens, I as the president will immediately declare a state of danger – meaning civil emergency," Wahid told the congregation at a mosque in Ciganjur on the outskirts of Jakarta after Friday prayers.

But Wahid said he was prepared to compromise if the national assembly, or People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), does not call him to account for his 20 months in office at the special session called for August 1.

"You ask me whether I can be brought to a special session. Actually I can't. But if the special session does not demand my accountability, or judge my performance, I am willing to compromise.

"So there is no accountability speech, and no judgement of my performance." Lower house MPs who called for the special session on the basis of two financial scandals in which they implicated him, and his erratic rule, want him to deliver an accountability speech.

If the speech is rejected, it would be tantamount to impeachment. But Wahid has repeatedly argued, renewing his plea again Friday, that under the constitution a president does not have to account for his rule until the end of his five-year-term.

Wahid was named in October 1999 – Indonesia's first freely elected president – and has consistently said he will serve out his term. Under a presidential system, he reasoned, the MPR would be in violation of the constitution if it pushed ahead with its demand for an accountability speech – and a state of emergency would be legally justified.

However his past threats to declare a civil emergency – which would allow him to dissolve parliament and call new elections – have been met with stiff and vocal opposition from the military and even some members of his own cabinet.

Although Wahid on Friday did not spell out what he meant by a compromise, sources close to the palace have said he planned to invite members of the major parties aligned against him in the house to take senior cabinet posts.

The past weeks have seen the president become increasingly isolated, partly because of his emergency threats. On Tuesday he lost his staunchest ally, the late attorney general Baharuddin Lopa, who died of heart failure in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, while his vice president Megawati Sukarnoputri has publicly distanced herself from him.