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© St. Petersburg Times, published June 17, 2002
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The grand council fashioning Afghanistan's new government erupted in argument and accusations Sunday over what kind of legislature should represent a fragmented population with competing interests jockeying desperately to be heard.
With a deadline today for ending deliberations, delegates assigned to cobble together a lawmaking body to work with newly elected President Hamid Karzai were choosing between an assembly based on geography and one based on population -- roughly equivalent to picking between the Senate and House of Representatives in the United States.
But that basic choice tapped into a variety of fears from groups wary of leaving the loya jirga, or grand council, without the levels of representation they demand. The brouhaha lasted most of Sunday and prevented little but squabbling from being accomplished.
"This whole process of appointing a parliament is a mess. No one has any control," said Mohammed Hashim, a Pashtun delegate from Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan.
"If the grand council leadership says, "We have appointed our own parliament,' then all of this loya jirga -- even the election of Karzai -- will mean nothing. It will be illegitimate," he said on the floor of the enormous tent where the council is being held.
Still unresolved are the shape of the executive Cabinet and the form of the legislature -- a task the loya jirga technically is not required to undertake under the agreement struck in Germany in December dictating the grand council's mandate.
On Sunday, initial attempts to resolve the legislature question degenerated into shouting and finger-pointing after loya jirga chairman Ismail Qasim Yar offered delegates a choice of ways to select it -- two representatives for each of 32 provinces, the initial idea endorsed by the loya jirga commission, or one representative for every 10 of the more than 1,600 delegates.
WASHINGTON -- Prominent Democrats in Congress called Sunday for removing Saddam Hussein from power, endorsing a classified Bush administration plan that gives the CIA broader power to take action against the Iraqi leader.
The administration "is trying to bring about a change in regime. . . . I think it is an appropriate action to take," House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said on ABC's This Week.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said he is satisfied with the degree of consultation between the administration and Congress on the plan.
"There is broad support for a regime change in Iraq" and "we want to work with the administration and try to find the best way and the best time to do this," said Daschle, D-S.D., who appeared on Fox News Sunday.
TAKHT-E-PUL, Afghanistan -- Growing numbers of Afghans are submitting fraudulent refugee claims in what is seen as an organized scheme involving officials inside and outside the country that is drying up U.N. assistance for the neediest.
An estimated 10,000 people, or 10 percent of the nearly 100,000 people who have come through one southern Afghan way station since mid March, have been rejected for assistance, said Monica Sandri of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in the southern city of Kandahar.
The large number of bogus cases are straining a system that is rapidly running out of money.
A family of five -- two parents and three children -- can receive as much as $110 for a trip to nearby Kandahar and 336 pounds of food, enough for three months.
Fake refugees allegedly pocket the money and sell the food for a tidy profit in a country where some people make as little as $10 a month.
"It's very lucrative if you go two or three times," Sandri said.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Two small bombs attached to Pakistani tanker trucks used to supply gasoline to U.S. troops exploded early Sunday, causing some damage but no injuries, a military spokesman.
Local government officials told the Associated Press that they suspect al-Qaida or Taliban supporters might have been responsible for the blast at the gas station near the U.S. base at Kandahar airport. They said the attackers might have planned to detonate the bombs as the trucks entered the heavily defended air base about 6 miles away.
It was the fourth attack around Kandahar in the past month against U.S. troops or American interests.
12TH DIES FROM BLAST: The death toll from Friday's blast at the U.S. Consulate in Pakistan rose to 12 Sunday after an injured constable died. Also, police said they were taking seriously a claim of responsibility from a previously unknown group called "al-Qanoon," or The Law. On Sunday, the group said in a fax to a Pakistani newspaper that if President Pervez Musharraf didn't resign, there would be more attacks.
BODIES OF SOLDIERS FLOWN TO GERMANY: The bodies of three Americans killed in a military plane crash in Afghanistan were escorted onto a cargo jet Sunday to be flown to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and then to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
4 DIE IN THE PHILIPPINES: At least three Muslim extremist guerrillas and one government soldier were killed in separate clashes in the southern Philippines Sunday, the military said.