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| Sunday, 23 June 2002 |
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Afghan leader to announce balance of cabinet KABUL, June 22 (Reuter) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to announce the remaining members of his cabinet on Saturday, one of his key advisors said, amid a power struggle within the crucial interior ministry. The fear is that without a stable government in Kabul, representing all tribal and political interests, warlords and other factional leaders in the provinces will continue to create their own fiefdoms where the rule of law is the gun. Adviser Tayeb Jawad said that the 11 remaining ministers would be named, making up the balance of a cabinet announced at the end of last week's Loya Jirga assembly. "They will be introduced to their related ministries. I am not aware if there will be any swearing in ceremony," Jawad told Reuters. He said he did not know if the interior ministry row had been resolved. Yunis Qanuni, a Panjsheri like the many of the most powerful figures within the former, interim government and installed as interior minister after the fall of the Taliban, resigned during the Loya Jirga ostensibly to appease the Pashtuns of the south who felt under-represented. But his supporters were not happy. Nor was Qanuni when Karzai made him education minister at the Loya Jirga, apparently as an afterthought. Since then, Qanuni supporters have demonstrated outside the ministry and postponed the arrival of the new minister, Taj Mohammad Wardak, when he came to introduce himself to his staff. A senior aide to Qanuni said he, top officials and warlords Ismael Khan and General Abdul Rashid Dostum -- left out of the new cabinet lineup so far -- held intensive discussions at the presidential palace on Friday, a holiday in Muslim Afghanistan. "They are discussing the formation of a parliament and possibly the post of a prime minister. These institutions will help to rid the country of the chaotic situation," a source said. Karzai, who has campaigned for national unity to establish law and order, said after introducing half his cabinet -- there are still a dozen places to be filled -- that Dostum had promised to work for peace and disarmament. But analysts fear these warlords, with private armies and mini-governments in their provinces, may not cooperate with the government in Kabul. Left out of the cabinet, some have been competing for the leadership of a would-be parliament to oversee Karzai's 18-month transitional government before general elections are held. |
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