Updated on
Summary
A deal between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and rebel lawmakers on opening the country's new parliament looked in doubt Sunday amid disagreement over a special tribunal on electoral fraud.It had seemed that a constitutional crisis in the war-torn country had been averted after lawmakers said late Saturday that Karzai, under heavy pressure from the West, had dropped a plan to delay parliament's opening by a month.But now lawmakers are threatening to reject a key condition of Karzai's for opening it Wednesday instead -- that they recognize a special tribunal on fraud in September's parliamentary polls which many say is unconstitutional.An official source, speaking anonymously, said Karzai was unlikely to open parliament Wednesday, as agreed under the deal, if the lawmakers did not promise to respect the tribunal.The disagreement between the lawmakers and Karzai centres on the fact that the Pashtuns, Karzai's traditional power base and Afghanistan's biggest ethnic group, were left under-represented in parliament after September's elections.The polls were hit by massive fraud -- around a quarter of the five million votes cast were thrown out and 24 early winners disqualified.MPs fear that the tribunal will oust some of their number, paving the way for their replacement by Pashtun candidates.
