KABUL: Preparations for the country's first direct nationwide elections have gotten off to an alarmingly slow start, leading to widespread concern that polls scheduled for late June may have to be seriously delayed.

Nearly two months since voter registration began, less than 10 per cent of about 10.5 million eligible voters have signed up, and only 2 per cent of eligible women.

No political parties have been officially recognized, no electoral law has been enacted, and security problems have limited registration to major cities in a country with a 70 per cent rural population.

"There is a race between institutionalization and reality," Manoel de Almeida Silva, the UN spokesman, said on Sunday. "Everyone is working very hard ... to bring about elections as close as possible to the original date, but it has got to move faster." Nevertheless, both Afghan and American officials here insisted on Monday that they are optimistic the elections can be held by June or July. While acknowledging that serious problems exist, they said plans are being formed to greatly expand the number of registration sites and to provide security for polling across the country.

"We recognize there is a major logistical challenge... but our position is still that the elections will take place as planned," said Jawad Luddin, chief spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

"We do not want to compromise the legitimacy of the elections, and that depends on how many people register. We are still working toward June and hopefully we will make it."

National elections are the culmination of a two-year political transition process that was laid out by the United Nations in late 2001 after the collapse of the Taliban regime. The country has been ruled since then by a transitional government under Karzai, which is strongly backed by the Bush administration.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, was even more adamant in insisting on Monday that the polls will take place as planned, with perhaps minor technical delays.

He said the current problems, including lack of security and the slow pace of registration, can be overcome if "major decisions are made" and the process is speeded up over the next few weeks.

"There is a way for this to happen if planning improves, and I am optimistic this will be the case," he told several journalists on Monday, refuting news reports from Washington that some US officials now believe the elections may have to be delayed.

"The test of every effort must be met. If decisions are made in time, it is not too late for all this to happen, and on time."

Yet like UN and Afghan officials, Khalilzad painted a daunting picture of the issues that must be quickly solved, from finding and hiring tens of thousands of rural voter registration workers to providing a combination of Afghan and international security forces to protect polling sites from terrorism and political violence.

Nationwide enthusiasm for elections is high, but many potential voters have been unable to register, including people who live in remote areas, women whose male relatives forbid them from participating, and inhabitants of southern regions where revived Taliban forces and other Islamic extremists have threatened anti-election violence.

Luddin said that the government plans to expand registration sites, now limited to 54 places in eight cities, to more than 4,000 sites across the country by May.

He said the final pre- election month will be a "massive exercise to complete the process, and to make sure everyone who is eligible will register and vote."

Both Luddin and Khalilzad said they believe ways can be found to provide adequate security for the el election process. But one proposal, for a special national guard, has been controversial because many people fear it would re-arm former militia fighters who are supposed to be disarmed and given civilian training under a UN-sponsored program that began in October.

A second idea of bringing temporary Nato troops for the election period, mentioned by Khalilzad Monday, has not yet been seriously discussed by Nato officials.

There are currently about 5,000 international peacekeeping troops in Kabul, but despite a theoretical agreement by Nato to expand its force, few additional troops have been committed by member countries.

Some Afghan and foreign observers have suggested the Bush administration is pressing for quick elections in order to bolster President Bush's own re-election efforts. But Khalilzad said Karzai would be the one damaged by an election delay, which he said could create a "crisis of legitimacy" if his transitional mandate ends before the polls take place.

Even if presidential elections can be prepared by midsummer, it is still far from clear whether parliamentary elections can take place at the same time as originally planned.

Some Afghan and foreign officials have said they must be delayed until next year, but if Karzai were to be re-elected without a parliament to balance his power, it could seriously exacerbate ethnic tensions in the country.

Khalilzad and others said it is also important to build on the momentum generated by the national constitutional assembly that was held in December, paving the way for the country's first democratic elections to take place after a quarter-century of foreign occupation, civil war and repressive religious rule.

But in interviews at voter registration sites around Kabul Monday, many people waiting to receive their photo-ID voter cards said they were far more concerned about having a chance to vote fairly and safely than about the timing of the elections. None had ever voted before, and some were bursting with excitement.

"Things started out very slowly here, but the number is growing day by day," said one worker registering voters in an apartment complex kindergarten. "We are all 100 per cent sure it will have to be delayed, but that's not a problem.

If after 23 years of war, if a delay is in the interests of the nation, nobody will mind." -Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.