June 14, 2002	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 2, 1423

KABUL: Eager to vent their views after two days of perceived deal-making behind their backs, delegates to Afghanistan’s freewheeling grand assembly took to the floor on Wednesday with passionate debate, an ode to warlords, a scuffle with police and veiled threats that renewed civil war is looming.

This ravaged nation’s first grappling with democracy in decades was rowdy enough to make the uninitiated mindful of the adage that no one wants to watch laws or sausages in the making.

But by local standards, the first full day of the weeklong gathering to choose national leaders stimulated vibrant and overdue discussion of all that ails this country.

The delegates unbridled enthusiasm portended a more raucous and unpredictable exchange than seemed likely earlier this week, when foreign diplomats and Afghans holding interim power were scripting the session before it even opened.

Delegates seized on their chance to pontificate with gusto.

The marathon talks ostensibly focused on choosing a conference chairman. The selection was a formality, but didn’t seem so as delegates channelled pent- up energy into the decision at hand after their chief task — electing a head of state — was essentially taken for them. Hamid Karzai is expected to be named transitional president without serious challenge before the end of the week.

After speeches, accusations and insults flew for 17 hours, the 1,650 delegates appeared set to give the conference leadership role to an ethnic Pakhtoon elder, Azizullah Wasefi, over the chief of the gathering’s organizing committee, Ismail Qasim Yar. The decision would be seen as a condemnation of Qasim Yar’s collaboration with Karzai’s Cabinet and Western diplomats to ensure the prime minister is chosen president at the Loya Jirga.

Mohammad Zahir Shah, the nation’s former monarch, withdrew his candidacy for head of state on Monday under US pressure. Former president Burhanuddin Rabbani did likewise on Tuesday, leaving the field largely clear for Karzai. The 44-year-old Pakhtoon interim head of state widely respected, but delegates have been chafing under the impression that their role has been hijacked by secret wheeling and dealing.

Still, the enthusiasm for discussion was feverish, if not always refined.

Turbaned elders, sartorial emigres and newly empowered women lined up by the dozens to make their points, often to lambaste organizers for giving gunmen who destroyed Afghanistan during 23 years of warfare a place at their forum.

“We were told the loya jirga would be off-limits to those with blood on their hands, yet we see these people everywhere,” charged Safar Mohammed, an elderly delegate. “There are so many men with guns here that I don’t know if I am at a Loya Jirga or a military convention.”

The warlords residual power was apparent in a clash between one delegate’s bodyguards and German peacekeepers early Wednesday.

When troops of the International Security Assistance Force stopped two truckloads of gunmen headed for the Jirga site, four of the Afghans drew their weapons, inciting a scuffle that ended with the bodyguards being handed over to local police.

The gunmen were escorting Afghanistan’s ambassador to Britain, Ahmad Wali Masoud, brother of the late warrior Ahmed Shah Masoud, who was assassinated by suspected Al Qaeda agents two days before the Sept 11 attacks.

Ahmad Masoud told journalists that the incident was “a very small misunderstanding that was cleared up quickly.”

Armed undercover agents of the National Directorate for Security, a state intelligence force under the control of the late Masoud’s fellow commanders of the Northern Alliance, also have been stalking the giant tent where the delegates are gathering.

The Afghans notorious reflex to reach for the gun was apparent in the not-so-subtle warnings of one warlord, Abdulrab Rasool Sayyaf, who said he was dismayed to hear his fellow delegates speaking ill of the mujahideen fighters who had helped liberate them both from Soviet occupation and the Taliban regime.

“I say to my friends here who are insulting the gunmen, we owe our peace and freedom to the army,” he said in a fiery warning.

As Sayyaf still controls one of the more menacing armed factions accused of human rights abuses against ethnic rivals, his defence of the past bloodletting was taken by many as a threat of reprisal.

Some foreign observers watched the displays of military muscle with more wonder than dismay.

“I was amazed to see in the first and second rows those so-called warlords sitting together,” European Union envoy Klaus-Peter Klaiber told a news conference.

“It tells me one thing. The interim administration has decided to try to integrate former warlords into policymaking in Kabul. If they succeed, that will be an achievement.”—Dawn/The LAT/WP News Service