September 16, 2003	Tuesday	Rajab 18, 1424

KABUL, Sept 15: Afghan President Hamid Karzai is deeply concerned about reports that ministers have been grabbing land from the poor, and has ordered a commission be formed to investigate the matter, his spokesman said on Monday.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Housing, Miloon Kothari, last week accused Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, Education Minister Yunis Qanuni and others of ordering 30 family homes in Kabul to be bulldozed to make way for their houses.

On Sunday, central bank governor Anwarul Haq Ahadi, who also stood to benefit from the land allocations in the upmarket Kabul district of Shir Pur, said President Karzai and Qasim Fahim had allocated him the land as he did not have a home in the capital.

Mr Karzai’s spokesman said this was not correct.

“It is not true at all that the president signed anything about the particular land in Shir Pur or about giving any land to ministers,” he told a news conference. “It is also untrue that there is a general government complicity in all this.

“The president is deeply concerned about its implications. He is very serious about it,” the spokesman said, adding that Mr Karzai had ordered the commission be formed at a cabinet meeting on Monday.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, wrote to Mr Kothari last week to say he should not have named names in public.

But on Monday he also expressed outrage at the way the homes were bulldozed with their occupants inside.

“The manner in which these houses were destroyed is totally wrong in my opinion,” he told reporters. “You don’t demolish houses over the heads of women and children.”

Asked if he agreed with some Afghans that it was a good thing Mr Kothari had named those responsible, Mr Brahimi said: “May be it is good, but the United Nations very often cannot do what is good.”—Reuters