Afghan lawmakers reject Cabinet picks

KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai must submit new Cabinet picks after defiant lawmakers rejected 17 of his 24 nominees Saturday, including a powerful warlord and the country's only woman minister.

The Afghan parliament rejected nominees viewed as Karzai's political cronies, those believed to be under the influence of warlords and others deemed unqualified.

"I think, unfortunately, that the criteria were either ethnicity or bribery or money," lawmaker Fawzia Kufi said of Karzai's picks.

The vote was a setback to Karzai, though one political analyst in Kabul speculated it could free up the president to appoint qualified professionals rather than settle political debts.

"There were lots of demands on Karzai from people asking for Cabinet positions because they campaigned for him," Mohammad Qasim Akhgar said. "This was the only way he could reward them, and if parliament didn't approve them it wasn't his fault. Very soon, Karzai will come out with a new list with the names of people he really wants to have in his Cabinet."

The new Cabinet is a bellwether for the United States and other nations hoping a stronger government will keep disenchanted Afghans from siding with the Taliban. Karzai won a second five-year term last year in a disputed election rife with ballot-box stuffing.

The lawmakers approved a handful of incumbent ministers favored by the West and instrumental to the war effort.

Karzai has defended his choices, which he announced after several delays. He said his proposed Cabinet represented a balance of the nation's ethnic factions.

But parliamentarians weren't happy. They complained the list looked too much like the existing Cabinet and spelled five more years of business as usual for the Karzai government, which has been criticized as being corrupt and ineffective.

Of the 12 incumbent ministers Karzai sought to retain, the parliament approved five: Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, Interior Minister Hanif Atmar, Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal, Agriculture Minister Muhammad Asif Rahimi and Education Minister Ghulam Farooq Wardak.

Karzai had wanted to keep Water and Power Minister Ismail Khan, a warlord in Herat province during the civil war of the 1990s who retains considerable local power. Critics said keeping Khan proved Karzai remained beholden to regional power brokers at the expense of the country's national interests. Khan's nomination was narrowly defeated.

Had he been seated, Khan would not have been the only warlord in Karzai's government. The two vice presidents — Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Karim Khalili — are both ex-warlords widely believed to have looted Afghanistan for years. Karzai likely put them on his ticket to win votes from their minority ethnic communities.

The parliament's rejection of the only woman on Karzai's current team — Minister of Women's Affairs Husn Bano Ghazanfar — was an awkward blow to the president, who has pledged to place more women in high government posts in the traditionally male-dominated society.

Despite their demand for fresh blood in the Cabinet, the lawmakers approved only two of 12 new names Karzai submitted.

"I'm sure that Karzai used a trick here by introducing some unknown people — completely new faces — that nobody knew anything about," said Akhgar, the analyst.

Karzai did not propose a nominee for foreign minister. He has asked incumbent Rangin Dadfar Spanta to stay until after the Jan. 28 international conference in London, which will focus on security and other issues as 37,000 more U.S. and NATO troops arrive in the country.

The Karzai administration had no comment on the voting, which took more than 10 hours. Each of the 232 members of parliament present for the vote marked paper ballots for each Cabinet nominee. After the votes were cast, two secretariats of parliament took turns reading the more than 5,500 votes of confidence or no confidence.