Committee Starts to Organize Grand Afghan Council

A 21-member commission charged with organizing a loya jirga, or grand council, formally convened Thursday in this capital, with interim Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai offering best wishes.

“Do good work,” Karzai told the panel members and an audience of diplomats attending the ceremony. “God bless you, and be successful.”

The panel is led by Ismail Kassim Yar, an expert in constitutional law. Notable members include women’s rights activist Soraya Parlika. It has already held several informal sessions, but Thursday’s ceremony marked the official start of its work.

Karzai called the undertaking an important step in Afghanistan’s transition to democracy.

“We want Afghanistan to have a better future--that’s your job,” he said. The commission, he said, “must make sure the Afghan common man gets his representation in the loya jirga.”

The nation’s ethnic, regional and religious groups will participate in the council. They will choose a transitional government to rule for 18 months in the run-up to elections. The council must convene before the interim government’s six-month term expires in June.

Having a council select the transitional government was approved at a power-sharing summit held in Germany last year, which also paved the way for the creation of Karzai’s government.

Some fear that the council could become a lightning rod for Afghanistan’s many tribal and regional rivalries.

The loya jirga is expected to be convened by Afghanistan’s exiled monarch, Mohammad Zaher Shah. The last council he convened was in the 1960s, and many Afghans regard it as the last legitimate one, despite attempts to hold councils in the 1980s and 1990s.