KABUL, Sept 27: One of the most respected members of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet resigned on Tuesday, amid widespread reports of disagreements with Karzai over the appointment of factional leaders to provincial posts.

Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali announced his resignation in an interview on Afghanistan’s private Tolo television channel.

“I will not stay in the interior ministry ... one main reason is that I have asked that I would like to resume my academic and scientific research,” he said.

Jalali’s departure will be seen as a blow for US-led international efforts to encourage formation of a modern technocratic administration in Afghanistan after more than 25 years of war and factional violence.

A Western-educated technocrat and a former soldier and journalist, Jalali returned to Afghanistan in 2002 after decades of exile in the United States, where he had headed the Afghan-language services of the Voice of America in Washington.—Reuters