Afghanistan's landmark Loya Jirga began voting yesterday for the nation's president with Hamid Karzai virtually certain to get the job of trying to heal a country broken by 23 years of war, tribal infighting and poverty.
The assembly had earlier agreed that voting would be by secret ballot with Karzai running against two little known contenders.
Karzai in a speech to the assembly earlier in the day said one of the most fundamental tasks facing the nation was to avoid further "conflict and misery" and foreign intervention.
"We will defend our national sovereignty at the price of our blood," he said in a passionate speech to a standing ovation from the 1,550 delegates.
Switching between the Pashto language of the majority Pashtuns and Dari, spoken by northern Tajiks and Uzbeks, he said Afghanistan wanted good ties with all its neighbors "some of whom we have suffered from in the past."
"We want progress, we want roads, but we will not compromise our national sovereignty."
Karzai is running against woman delegate Masoodeh Jalal and little known government official Mir Mohammad Mahfouz Nedaei.
Ismail Qasimyar, a Karzai supporter, was chosen chairman of the grand assembly after an all-night session of sometimes raucous debate, with royalist candidates putting up a good challenge.
Delegates said the new Cabinet would be ethnically broadbased, with the president coming from the majority Pashtuns -- Karzai is one -- and the first vice-president a Tajik. The judiciary is expected to be led by an Uzbek.
The Loya Jirga will choose a 111-member parliament that will sit soon after the new government, to be in place for 18 months until general elections are held, is chosen.
Former king Mohammad Zahir Shah has been the subject of much of the Loya Jirga debate, after he opened the assembly on Tuesday to announce he was backing Karzai and then exiting the political stage, thus defusing a crisis with feuding faction leaders.
Karzai proposed that the king be named "father of the country" and given symbolic roles.
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