Afghanistan 'agrees new charter'

Afghanistan’s constitutional convention agreed on a historic new charter today, the convention’s chairman said.

Just a day after warning that the meeting, or loya jirga, was heading toward a humiliating failure, chairman Sibghatullah Mujaddedi told the 502 delegates gathered under a giant tent in the Afghan capital that last-ditch diplomacy had secured a comprehensive deal.

“We are very happy that all the members of the loya jirga have reached a very successful agreement,” Mujaddedi said.

He gave no details of how an impasse over whether to grant official status to minority languages, an issue which brought the meeting close to collapse, had been solved.

But he said a new draft of the document would be distributed to the delegates shortly and that President Hamid Karzai would join the gathering later today to oversee the charter’s official ratification.

The accord is expected to give the US-backed Karzai the strong presidential system he had insisted on.

Karzai has argued strongly for a dominant chief executive to hold the country together as it rebuilds and reconciles after more than two decades of war, and said he wouldn’t run again if he didn’t get his way.

It was also a triumph for the United States and United Nations, whose officials worked tirelessly to broker a backroom agreement to bolster a peace process begun after the ousting of the Taliban two years ago.