Jakarta – Threatened with impeachment, Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid is playing a dangerous game by mobilising thousands of supporters in his stronghold of East Java, diplomats said Thursday.

For six days running his supporters have taken to the streets in East Java, the stronghold of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country's leading Muslim organisation which Wahid headed for 15 years.

The protests have spilled over into violence with the protestors torching the offices of the opposition Golkar party, which has backed moves to impeach Wahid over two alleged financial scandals.

Wahid, the country's first democratically elected president, is due to visit the area on Friday officially in a bid to calm the tensions, but his motives remain ambiguous.

Although he has urged his supporters not to resort to violence, he has failed to bow to his opponents' demands and call for a halt to the demonstrations, which Thursday left 23 people injured.

In fact he may even have fanned the flames, by saying the situation was "the price to be paid" for the ongoing process of democratisation launched with the fall of former strongman Suharto in 1998.

"Wahid is playing his last card, the people – and in fact the NU – against the parliament. It's a warning to scare the MPs. He wants to be seen as the only one capable of mobilising, the only one able to then show that he can control the situation and calm his troops," said one diplomat.

Wahid has gained some time on the political front after being censured by parliament for his alleged role in the two scandals, after the military and the country's two main parties refused to back calls to impeach him immediately.

But diplomats fear an increasing period of instability with Wahid given four months to mend his ways or face a special impeachment session. One diplomat warned the situation could slide out of control as the NU steps up its warnings of a "bloodbath" and a "civil war" if Wahid is stripped of the presidency.

The NU played a major role in the massacres of hundreds of thousands of members of the Communist Party PKI and their sympathisers in 1965-66 in the bloodletting surrounding Suharto's rise to power.

"Until now, Wahid has taken care to dissociate his political action through his party, the PKB, from the NU," said one diplomat. "This time, the NU and its self-defence forces the 'Banser,' is in the frontline with the risk of clashes taking on religious overtones."

Diplomats fear the troubles could migrate into central Java, where the NU is not so strong, and the capital Jakarta where the Islamic parties and the head of the national assembly Amien Rais, the former head of the rival Muslim group, the Muhammadyia, have led calls for Wahid to resign.

For the time being the violence has mainly affected East Java, and has been effectively channelled.

Protestors have only attacked the offices of Suharto's former political vehicle, Golkar, "which doesn't have the means to confront the NU on the streets," said a diplomat. Another factor which will determine Wahid's future is what stand the army with its 38 seats in 500-seat lower house of parliament chooses to adopt.

Although the military faction approved the report implicating Wahid in the financial scandals, it has since played a moderating role by reaffirming its loyalty to the "constitutionally elected" president and refusing to echo the calls for him to go.

"The army is today taking an extremely legalistic line. It's primary concern is the unity of the country," said a military expert. "To throw itself behind Wahid's immediate impeachment, as the radical MPs want, is a leap into the unknown for the military risking fire and bloodshed in Java or the division of the island."

Wahid, now politically weakened, could also be tempted to try to shore up the military's support and bow to its demands to declare a state of emergency in the troubled provinces of Aceh and Irian Jaya, giving it carte blanche to act, another diplomat said.