Afghan President Hamid Karzai is facing an open rebellion among powerful faction leaders opposing his drive for a strongly centralized presidency during a historic constitutional council taking place in the capital.
Some 500 delegates to the closely guarded grand council, or Loya Jirga, have spent 11 days debating a draft put forward by Karzai's government. It foresees a tolerant Islamic state under a strong presidency, and is supposed to pave the way for landmark elections next summer.
The tension surrounding the gathering was underlined early yesterday when a bomb damaged a UN guest house on the other side of the Afghan capital. No one was injured.
"The presidential form of government is known all over the world. The powers are known, the limitations are known," Karzai told reporters Wednesday on the steps of his Kabul palace. "We should be making a constitution that reflects that system, not a confusion of it."
But Burhanuddin Rabbani, a leader of the Northern Alliance faction who was president during Afghanistan's ruinous 1992-1996 civil war, said some delegates feared the charter would produce a dictatorship.
"In Third World countries, presidents have passed power to their son and the result has been bloodshed and coups," he said in the huge tent where the meeting is being held.
Afghan and US officials say they are confident a majority of the council wants a presidential system, which Karzai argues is critical to law and order in a country where the ousted Taliban regime once provided haven to the al-Qaeda network.
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