Breakaway group to challenge Karzai leadership

DISGRUNTLED factions within Afghanistan’s coalition government have held a series of meetings to consider withdrawing their support for President Hamid Karzai in the run-up to elections next year, officials said yesterday.

The instability comes as this war-ravaged country's various ethnic and political groups try to agree on a new constitution that will lay the foundation for the first democratic elections in decades, scheduled for June.

The political wrangling also comes as Karzai grapples with a recent upsurge in attacks by Taliban and al-Qaida militants against American forces, aid workers and the US-backed government.

Yesterday marked the second anniversary of the October 7, 2001, launch of Operation Enduring Freedom, the American war that ousted the Taliban. About 11,500 US-led coalition troops are still hunting down Taliban and al-Qaida remnants who appear to have regrouped in the past few months.

Leaders of the Northern Alliance the mainly ethnic Tajik grouping of militia leaders, some of whom are members of the government have met several times in the past week to consider various alternative candidates for the elections, said Hafiz Mansour, publisher of a weekly newspaper, Payum-i-Majahid, which represents the Northern Alliance. "Karzai's government has failed to rebuild this country. We are looking for another candidate to run in his place," he said. "This is a major threat to his government."

He declined to name the leaders involved and said discussions were ongoing to choose a presidential candidate.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Omar Samad, acknowledged there had been a series of meetings by frustrated coalition members, but said they did not represent a threat to Karzai, a member of the Pashtun ethnic group, the country's largest.

He said those involved in the breakaway talks represented only a small part of the coalition government.