By Lamine Ghanmi

RABAT, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Widespread fears of al Qaeda-inspired bombings and accusations that Islamists are to blame for terrorism are unlikely to impact Morocco's upcoming parliamentary poll or halt the advance of moderate Islamists.

Morocco's secular elite considered banning the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) in 2003 after suicide bombings killed 45 people in Casablanca.

But the PJD, tipped to lead 32 other parties in the Sept. 7 parliamentary polls, survived that crisis and secular and Socialist charges that Islamist ideology was "morally responsible" for violence by Islamist jihadists.

Analysts and diplomats said any Islamist-linked bombings in the run-up to next month's elections would become new ammunition in the ideological war between Islamists and their secular foes, but the vote would not be much influenced by any attacks.

"The danger of terror attacks is looming large but I do not believe attacks during the campaign would impact the election," said leading security analyst Tawfik Bouachrine.

"Neither Al Qaeda in the Maghreb nor the cells linked to it in the region have a precise political agenda. They want only to spread fear and undermine trust in the state," he added.

Moroccan secularist and Socialist politicians on Saturday launched the two-week campaign during which they will try to trim the PJD's advance by linking the party to terrorism.

They argue PJD, though it is not linked directly to terrorism, advocates an "ideology feeding terrorism".

"Moroccan voters have to choose between those who seek to push Morocco into a dark tunnel of obscurantism, hatred and war of religious sects and those who defend democracy and progress," said Socialist Union of Popular Forces chief Mohamed El Yazghi.

PJD leaders say they are staunch opponents of radical Islamists and violence.

"We are all part of the same front against terrorism, whether we are leftists or Islamists. We are all committed to protect the country," said Lahcen Daoudi, top PJD official.

"Social misery, poverty and unemployment are factors which push youth to extremism. We in the PJD are aware that we must explain to the people that violence is useless," he added.

North Africa has been on alert since al Qaeda's regional wing, Algeria-based Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, threatened last month to step up its war against "corrupt" Maghreb rulers and their Western allies.

Seven al Qaeda-inspired suicide bombers blew themselves up in March and April in Casablanca, killing themselves and one police officer.

Early in August, a 30-year-old man tried but failed to blow himself up on a bus with foreign tourists at Meknes, 130 km (81 miles) from Rabat.

PJD, which has become increasingly palatable to reform-minded King Mohammed and business and political elites around him, has been dogged by suspicions it has a hidden agenda to turn Morocco into a purist Islamist state.

PJD, the main opposition party with 42 seats in the current 325-member parliament, offers a pro-monarchy agenda focusing on fighting corruption.

"I believe that terrorist bombings would benefit moderate Islamists like PJD because public opinion would look at them as an alternative to radical Islamists," said Mohamed Darif, a leading political analyst of Islamist groups in North Africa.

"What many analysts fail to see is that the Islamist base voting for PJD is united and committed. That base deems anti-Islamists are morally responsible for the bombings because of their what they perceive as wrong policy," he added.

Secularist writer Said Lakhal and other figures in the human rights community and liberal circles said, however, they feared Islamists might prompt violence in the future in Morocco similar to what Algeria experienced in the 1990s.

Algeria's military-dominated authorities scrapped the polls in 1992 when the now banned Islamic Salvation Front was poised to win, plunging the country into violence that killed up to 200,000 people.

"PJD's ideology is based on being against secularists and secularism. PJD is a religious party which it did not get rid of its fundamentalist culture and confrontation," Lakhal said.

But a senior Western diplomat dismissed such prospect at least for the near term.

"The Islamists in Algeria aimed then at replacing the military-dominated establishment.Here Islamists are more moderate, royalist and just want participation," he said.

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