AFGHANISTAN: Afghanistan's grand assembly adjourned yesterday after the ethnically divided gathering failed to agree how to choose members of a new parliament that will oversee the country's government for the next 18 months.
Days of bickering, an occasional scuffle and hundreds of speeches have paralysed the traditional debating forum of the Loya Jirga, which made little progress yesterday.
The minority ethnic groups from northern Afghanistan supported a proposal from Loya Jirga head, Mr Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar, that one member of parliament be nominated from every 10 delegates to the assembly, a delegate, Mr Afasar Rahbin, said.
But the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic tribe, favoured another Qasimyar suggestion that two representatives from each province be chosen for the legislature, tasked to oversee the transitional government of Mr Hamid Karzai.
"The meeting has been postponed until tomorrow. There is a tense atmosphere here," said Mr Rahbin, a delegate from Kabul, inside a large white tent where nearly 1,600 delegates are gathered in a debating process that goes back centuries.
Mr Karzai held private discussions with some of the delegates yesterday and has been invited by Mr Qasimyar to address the Loya Jirga today, hopefully to announce a decision.
Yesterday's dispute was described as the most serious incident since the start of the Loya Jirga last Tuesday.
The delegates, from Afghan-Americans in business suits to Muslim mullahs in turbans, have agreed on just one thing so far - that Mr Karzai is the best man to lead the country out of 23 years of war and chaos towards peace and stability.
Since the assembly voted on Thursday to elect Mr Karzai the leader for the next 18 months before general elections, debate has got bogged down in speeches on parochial concerns.
The assembly - a rare convocation of community leaders from throughout the 32 provinces and overseas - will end at least a day late, either on today or tomorrow.
On Saturday, the assembly was ruffled after the UN complained to Mr Karzai about the "alarming level of violence" in the north of the country, including armed attacks, robberies and the gang rape of an international aid worker.
The breakdown of law and order in Mazar-i-Sharif - a key crossroads city that warlords, Mr Abdul Rashid Dostum and Mr Atta Mohammad, have been competing to control - comes at a time when Mr Karzai has repeatedly appealed to foreign aid donors to fulfil $4.5 billion in aid pledges.
On Friday, a US aid vehicle was fired on while overseeing bread distribution wounding an Afghan worker, a US spokesman, Mr Manoel de Almeida Silva, said. The international aid worker was raped last week, he said.
Many aid workers "are considering reducing or discontinuing work here", he added.
While security has been restored to the capital with the help of an international peacekeeping force, a number of Afghans have called for peacekeepers to be deployed elsewhere in the country, especially in Mazar.
Washington has in the past been reluctant to agree to that, fearing it could interfere with the operation of the 13,000-strong US-led force hunting for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the mountainous countryside.
Mr Karzai has been under pressure from fellow Pashtuns to dump some leaders from the Northern Alliance, a coalition of ethnic forces that drove the Taliban from power with US air support.
But Mr Karzai has developed a good working relationship with the present ministers during the past six months and still relies on the militarily strong Northern Alliance in his efforts to establish law and order. - (Reuters)