Asia

Asia

President Hamid Karzai agrees to let new Afghanistan parliament meet, averting crisis

23 January 2011 02:06 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A showdown between President Hamid Karzai and his country’s newly elected parliament was averted late Saturday after the Afghan leader agreed to convene the inaugural legislative session this week rather than push for a one-month postponement, APA reports quoting Los Angeles Time.

Lawmakers were intent on defying Karzai’s order to delay the first session, initially scheduled for Sunday, and had vowed they would meet at a mosque or in the street if security forces blocked them from the parliament building.

The standoff had pushed the Afghan leader and his government to the brink of a full-blown political crisis.

Members of the 249-seat lower house of parliament were elected in September in elections tainted by allegations of fraud and voter intimidation. After investigating the allegations, an election watchdog body discarded one-fourth of the ballots cast and disqualified 19 winning candidates.

Karzai’s government, however, pushed for further inquiry into alleged irregularities. It is widely believed that Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, felt that vote fraud prevented a higher turnout in districts dominated by Pashtun constituencies.

A Supreme Court-ordered special tribunal was established in December to continue investigating the election, and Karzai wanted the inaugural parliamentary session delayed while the tribunal continued its work.

Fraud charges that have come to define elections during Karzai’s tenure as president. When he was reelected in 2009, findings of fraud disqualified a third of the vote.

Karzai met with lawmakers Saturday at the presidential palace to hammer out a compromise. Under mounting pressure from the U.N. and the U.S. to back down, Karzai backed off of his insistence on a one-month delay.

Lawmakers said they expected Karzai to formally announce Sunday the agreement reached between the two sides, and then be present Wednesday to inaugurate the new parliament as required by the country’s constitution.

If he reneges on the compromise, said lawmaker Fawzai Kofi, "we are ready to inaugurate parliament ourselves at any time."

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Saturday, one Afghan civilian was killed and two others injured when three militants caught in a firefight with Afghan and coalition troops detonated their explosives-filled suicide vests in the eastern province of Khost, said Abdul Hakim Eshaqzai, the provincial police chief.

Ten militants were killed in the gun battle and 11 others were arrested, Eshaqzai said.

Also Saturday, two NATO troops were killed in a roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan. NATO did not divulge the nationalities of the troops or the specific location of the attack.