New cabinet list presented to parliament

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(19 Dec 2009) SHOTLIST
1. Mid of first Vice-President Mohammad Qasim Fahim entering parliament
2. Various of minister
3. Various of lawmakers
4. Mid of General Abdul Rahim Wardak, candidate for defence ministry
5. Mid of lawmakers
6. Mid of Mohammad Hanif Atmar, candidate for interior ministry
7. Mid of Mohammad Qasim Fahim, first vice-president, walking to rostrum
8. SOUNDBITE (Dari) Mohammad Qasim Fahim, Afghanistan's first vice-president
"Some of the previous ministers who did good and professional work and have set a good agenda are in the new cabinet."
9. Mid of Husun Bano Ghazanfer, candidate for women affairs ministry
10. SOUNDBITE: (English) Khaled Pashtun, member of parliament, Kandahar.
"The new faces. One of the really scary things that we are thinking and are really concerned about is that President Karzai was under tremendous pressure by some of the previous warlords and some of the notorious people of Afghanistan in the past. They introduced some of the new faces in the cabinet."
11. Mid of parliament exterior
STORYLINE
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's nominees for a new cabinet government on Saturday has provoked dismay among many parliamentary members and drawn a cautiously positive response from the United Nations mission there.
The president has been under intense international pressure to cleanse his government of corruption and mismanagement and his list jettisons the heads of two ministries embroiled in corruption probes.
Karzai also keeps US favourites in several posts critical to the war and reconstruction.
However, he needs to mollify domestic political allies, including warlords, who have kept him in power.
And some parliamentary members expressed strong concern about the new names among the nominees, suspecting they would do the bidding of warlords who are widely reviled for their brutality in the civil war and who still hold significant power in their regions.
As with Karzai's first cabinet, the new slate of proposed ministers is a collection of Western-educated Afghans and former mujahedeen or their nominees.
Several of the new appointments have previous government experience and good educational credentials.
It's unclear, though, whether they will clean up the bribery and graft that has become business as usual in the government.
Still, First Vice-President Mohammad Fahim told parliament on Saturday that those nominated for the new cabinet were "ministers who were experts and did a good job".
Holdovers from the current cabinet include the defence, interior and finance ministers.
The list did not include a nominee for foreign minister; Karzai has said he will make that nomination after the international conference on Afghanistan to be held in London in late January.
A presidential spokesman said Karzai had made his decision in consultation with international officials and Afghan political figures but that he was not beholden to either.
He added that Karzai was confident that the proposed list of ministers would work to implement reforms to root out corruption from the administration.
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