SAN FRANCISCO, May 18: Bribery allegations tarnish election process of the Loya Jirga in Afghanistan while Pakhtoon leaders demand postponement of the Jirga for 18 months, US press reports said.

Chicago Tribune quoted tribal elders as saying that they had been offered up to $1,000 from local warlords in Paktia. Poor farmers say they have been handed bags of flour or given free taxi rides to the nearest town centre for their vote.

The paper said the reports raised concerns that the Jirga process and its results — the eventual naming of a new government next month - could further destabilize the volatile nation.

United Nations officials and members of the Afghan commission organizing the Jirga admit that it, too, will be filled with difficulties, the paper said.

Ethnic groups are grumbling about lack of representation from their districts. People question who will select up to 400 delegates handpicked from women’s groups, university faculties and religious scholars.

Christian Science Monitor reported from Gardez that a group of influential tribal leaders from seven of Afghanistan’s 33 provinces said they were so dismayed at the process by which the Jirga was being formed that they would boycott the gathering. The leaders are also demanding that the meeting, which will select a 111-person parliament, be postponed for 18 months.

The paper said the emergence of the movement represented the first organized opposition to the convening of the Jirga.

But the leaders of the boycott, representing primarily Pakhtoon provinces, say the selection process has failed to keep out warlords and others who have committed atrocities. They said that the formula for the creation of the Jirga was undemocratic. Approximately 500 of the 1,500 delegates to the week-long convention will be selected by 21 Loya Jirga commissioners, rather than being elected.

In a petition to the UN and the Jirga commission, the group says the meeting is being convened without heed to traditional guidelines.

The leaders claim that it ignores the stipulations in Bonn agreements that an “emergency Loya Jirga” be based on the country’s 1964 constitution.

The document called for 216 electoral districts, a number that has climbed to 362 for the upcoming Jirga - a shift that has come at the expense of southern Afghanistan, say the petitioners.