Telegraph

Women named in new Afghan government (Filed: 05/12/2001)

THE power-sharing agreement signed by Afghan factions in Bonn this morning has named royalist Pashtun Hamid Karzai as chairman and appointed two women as cabinet members.

The post-Taliban government will include Sima Samar, a doctor running health centres for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, as vice president and minister of labour and social affairs. Suhaila Sidiq, a surgeon and former army general, has been appointed minister of public health.

Although women often served as ministers in cabinets before 1992, when ex-communist president Najibullah was removed, Samar will be the first woman to work in such a senior post. Under the Taliban, women were denied education and barred from all work except in the health sector.

UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said the 30-member executive cabinet will rule Afghanistan for the next six months. He also confirmed that three key posts were being retained by the Northern Alliance.

Fawzi said the interim government would take over the running of Afghanistan on December 22. The interim authority will govern Afghanistan for a six-month period, before an emergency Loya Jirga - or traditional assembly of elders - appoints an 18-month transitional government.

The Alliance's foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, interior minister Yunus Qanooni and defence minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim will all keep their jobs under today's agreement, said Fawzi. "The incumbents will continue to hold these ministries," he said.

The three ethnic Tajiks are from the main faction within the Northern Alliance, whose forces control Kabul and much of the country, and were all close aides to assassinated resistance commander Ahmad Shah Masood.

Karzai, the 44-year-old former deputy foreign minister, currently fighting the Taliban around Kandahar, is an ally of the exiled Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah.

There was no immediate indication whether Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani would play any role in the new administration, but the United Nations has appealed to him to cooperate and allow the successful implementation of the accord. After days of refusing a deal, Rabbani finally approved his camp's nominations and signed away his status as titular head of state.

The groups had decided to attribute the posts on a weighted quota system, and Fawzi indicated that ethnic considerations as well as professional competence and moral integrity were the criteria for assigning jobs.

Under the terms of their accord, former king Mohammed Zahir Shah gets a symbolic role, presiding over the Loya Jirga. The accord provides for the deployment of an international security force in Kabul and its surrounding area.

The seven-page UN blueprint for a post-Taliban Afghanistan is designed to put the country on a road to general elections and "a broad-based, gender-sensitive, multi-ethnic and fully representative government."

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2001