AFP - 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 recognise 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.
"What's being said about the opening of the parliament on Wednesday, that's conditional," the official source told AFP.
Asked if Karzai will open the parliament Wednesday if the MPs fail to accept his condition over the tribunal, the source added: "I don't think so."
He continued: "The MPs said that they will accept the outcomes of the legal process that is currently underway. The president sent them to write this down, sign it and bring it back to him. So far, they have not returned."
Meanwhile, lawmaker Molawi Rahman Rahmani said a fresh round of talks between Karzai and MPs was set to be held Monday, adding that most lawmakers wanted to see the special tribunal abolished.
"The same 38 people (who held talks with the president Saturday) are going to talk to Karzai regarding the abolishing of the special tribunal," he said.
"We are going to inaugurate the parliament on Wednesday" with or without Karzai, Rahmani added, while saying he thought Karzai would "probably" be there.
Highlighting wider tensions caused by the long-running saga, up to 150 losing candidates and supporters from the September elections held a protest in Kabul against any opening of the parliament Sunday.
They want Karzai to cancel their election results and hold recounts.
One losing candidate, Najibullah Mujahid, told AFP: "This agreement is the result of pressure by drug dealers and foreign embassies.
"We don't accept it. We tell the president we support you and you, president, should follow constitutional law."
Early Sunday, around 200 out of 249 members of the Wolesi Jirga -- the lower house -- gathered in Kabul for talks after announcing Saturday that Karzai had agreed to open parliament Wednesday, a U-turn on a previous plan to delay for a month.
This averted a potential clash with MPs Sunday, the date originally slated for the inauguration, when they had planned to open parliament without Karzai in defiance of his authority.
In the wake of the deal, lawmakers were debating whether to agree that Afghanistan's Supreme Court rather than the tribunal can rule on electoral fraud, as Karzai stipulated.
They later agreed to go back for more talks with Karzai on this point.
One leading MP, Mohammad Younus Qanooni, said: "We're against the special tribunal and we only recognise the regular Supreme Court.
"We're working to convince the president to agree to scrap the electoral tribunal."
Karzai's office, which has not commented on the latest situation, announced on Wednesday it was delaying the inauguration of parliament for a month from the original date of Sunday.
That came after the head of the Supreme Court special tribunal called for a delay of at least four weeks, warning that some results could be thrown out.
In a statement on Friday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan expressed "deep concern and surprise" at Karzai's plan to delay the inauguration and, along with the US, urged a swift resolution to the impasse.
International troops fighting the Pashtun-dominated Taliban are due to start limited withdrawals in July ahead of Afghan forces assuming control of security in 2014.
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