CAIRO - Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood was swift in its rejection of reports that its leader resigned after a row with conservatives.
The Brotherhood was reacting to front page reports in the Egyptian press on Monday that Supreme Guide Mohammed Mahdi Akef stormed out of a meeting at the weekend, saying he quit.
Akef reportedly clashed with conservative leaders over the appointment of senior member Essam al-Erian, who is associated with the group's reformist wing, to the Brotherhood's politburo.
The dispute has been brewing since the recent death of Mohammed Hilal, which opened a seat in the group's politburo. The conservatives reportedly blocked Erian when he was nominated.
Analysts said it was a power struggle, pitting an old guard that survived the harsh crackdown by former president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1960s against relatively new and moderate newcomers such as Erian.
"There was a conflict, that was for sure," said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on the Brotherhood with the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
"It is an organisational conflict. There is a group that does not want newcomers," he said.
But it fed into a widespread discontent among a younger generation that complains of rigid, antiquated command.
"There's a problem of ideas. There's a conservative tendency that controls the leadership," said Abdel Moneim Mahmud, a journalist associated with the reformist wing.
Mahmud said reformists want to see the Brotherhood, which controls a fifth of seats in parliament after it ran independent candidates to get around a ban on the movement, to take on more political action in alliance with the country's leftist and liberal opposition.
"The conflict is not on strategy in regards to the government," Rashwan said.
"They have the same strategy of non-confrontation with the regime. But there are differences in ideology."
Akef seems keen to set a democratic example, being the first leader of the Brotherhood who has promised to step down once his term ends early next year, an unusual move in a country where leaders' resignations are often published in the form of a eulogy.
"Akef is a balanced man...He likes different views in his office," Mahmud said.
Akef, 81, has headed the group since 2004, overseeing their surprise gains in a parliamentary election a year later.
He will leave the Brotherhood at a crossroads, with two of his possible replacements in prison -- part of an ongoing police crackdown against the group, which has been banned since 1954.
Egyptians protest at Algeria's Cairo embassy