Afghan parliament adjourns despite Cabinet standoff; Gunmen kill district chief, 5 others

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Afghan lawmakers adjourn despite Cabinet standoff

KABUL — Afghanistan’s parliament adjourned Sunday for its winter recess without waiting for President Hamid Karzai to offer new Cabinet nominees to replace those rejected in two rounds of confirmation votes. Karzai said he’ll appoint caretakers to run those ministries without confirmed leaders to avoid government paralysis as NATO ramps up the war against the Taliban.

The uncertainty over the makeup of Karzai’s administration following the flawed presidential election last year compounds the many problems facing Afghanistan, most notably the increasingly bloody insurgency. In the latest violence, gunmen opened fire on a local government convoy Sunday, killing six people, including a district chief. Separately, NATO said an American soldier died Monday in Kabul of apparent natural causes.

Also, international forces killed two Afghan civilians in separate checkpoint shootings, underscoring the dangers facing Afghans caught in the middle of escalating combat.

The United States and other countries contributing aid and troops to Afghanistan are eager for Karzai to assemble a second-term administration that is able combat corruption and pursue reforms needed to garner public support for the government and defeat the Taliban.

But Afghan lawmakers have twice rejected the majority of Karzai’s picks to run ministries, forcing him to go back to the drawing board to fill 11 of 25 slots, including public health and border and tribal affairs.

Karzai’s spokesman said Sunday it was not likely the president would have a Cabinet in place before a Jan. 28 international conference in London — as had been hoped by Washington and its allies.

“Our understanding is that we may not be able to do so and that the parliament might go to their recess and we will introduce new members after they come back from their recess,” spokesman Waheed Omar said at a news conference.

The president might leave current ministers in place as caretakers or he might appoint new people to keep the ministries running, Omar said.

Mohammad Saleh Suljoqi, the secretary for the parliamentary speaker, said lawmakers decided Sunday to adjourn for a recess through the end of February despite the Cabinet standoff, although he acknowledged Karzai has the constitutional authority to call them back.

Continued political turmoil threatens to distract Karzai from the fight against the Taliban even as Washington and its allies have begun sending 37,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan.

Police blamed Taliban militants for Sunday’s attack on the local government convoy, which occurred in a relatively safe area in the western province of Herat. Afghan officials have frequently been targeted by violence as militants seek to derail efforts to establish government control over regions outside Kabul.

The gunmen ambushed the convoy from all directions as it was traveling on the main highway between the provincial capital of Herat to the district of Chishti Sharif, provincial police spokesman Noor Khan Nekzad said.

Abdul Qadus Qayyum, the administrative chief of Chishti Sharif, the local director of criminal investigations and four policemen, were killed after a 50-minute gunbattle, according to the Interior Ministry.

Raouf Ahmedi, a spokesman for police in western Afghanistan, and other officials blamed Taliban militants, saying the men apparently were targeted because they were high-ranking officials.

Qayyum, previously an intelligence director in Herat, was named to the district chief post two months ago and did not travel with additional security because the area has not suffered many attacks, Nekzad said.

Afghan civilian deaths soared last year to the highest annual level of the war, largely because of Taliban attacks ranging from suicide bombings to assassinations, according to a recent U.N. report.

The number of Afghans killed by U.S. and other international forces, meanwhile, declined sharply after top commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal tightened rules on the use of airstrikes and other weaponry to reduce civilian casualties last year.

German soldiers killed one civilian and wounded another when a car speeding toward a temporary checkpoint ignored warnings to stop Sunday in the northern city of Kunduz, officials said.

NATO said the vehicle pulled out of the line at the checkpoint and bypassed the first traffic control point at about 1:30 p.m. The driver then ignored repeated warnings, including hand signals and warning shots and continued moving toward service members manning a second checkpoint.

International forces also killed an Afghan civilian Sunday after opening fire at a speeding vehicle with no headlights in southern Afghanistan, NATO said. The shooting occurred in the Garmsir district of Helmand province, a Taliban-influenced area expected to be a major focus of President Barack Obama’s troop surge.

The Afghan man — one of six people in the vehicle — was shot in the chest and died of his wounds after he was transported to a medical facility at Forward Operating Base Dwyer, NATO said in a statement.

Garmsir has been the site of violent demonstrations this week after rumors spread that NATO forces had desecrated a Quran. NATO denies the rumors.

Both incidents were under investigation, NATO said.

Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.