Jakarta – More than 600 people signed up on Monday to join a death squad aimed at preventing beleagured Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid from being ousted, a group leader said.

The Front for the Defenders of Truth is preparing 20,000 registration forms to be filled in by those who wish to "die as martyrs by defending President Abdurrahman Wahid," group coordinator Wiro Sugiman said.

"This is just the first step of efforts to accomodate people who wish to defend Gus Dur [Wahid] as a legitimate president," Sugiman told AFP by telephone from Surabaya, the capital of East Java province. He said the registration drive would be expanded to cover the whole of East Java.

East Java is Wahid's political heartland and home to millions of members of the 40-million strong Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest Islamic group Wahid once led for more than a decade until he became Indonesia's first democratically-elected president in October 1999.

The forms carry a vow which reads "I hereby declare I am ready to die as a martyr to defend President Abdurrahman Wahid in his duties to uphold the Constitution and the integrity of the Republic of Indonesia." Sugiman said the volunteers would travel to Jakarta if Wahid's opponents in the parliament continued their drive to unseat the nearly-blind president.