By Jonathon Burch
KABUL, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Dozens of disgruntled members of Afghanistan's parliament threatened on Monday to give President Hamid Karzai a deadline to inaugurate a new session of the assembly two months after a fraud-marred election.
Afghanistan's political crisis is back on the boil with no sign of a new parliament being formed since the Sept. 18 ballot and reports that the attorney general's office had asked for the vote to be annulled.
The crisis presents a worrying message for U.S. President Barack Obama, who will not want to see any further signs of instability from Kabul as he completes a review of his Afghanistan war strategy this week.
Consistent allegations of vote fraud in the September polls, as well as in a presidential election last year, have raised questions about the credibility of Karzai and his government as a partner at a time when U.S. and NATO leaders are assessing their long-term commitment to Afghanistan.
Final general election results from the country's 34 provinces were released on Dec. 1. Poll officials had said late in November that a new parliament could be formed within a week but there has been no attempt to convene the assembly.
About 100 members gathered at the parliament in Kabul on Monday, including the parliament speaker Mohammad Younis Qanuni, to debate their next step.
"We are going to give Karzai a deadline to inaugurate parliament," Fawzia Kufi, an outspoken woman member of parliament from the northeastern province of Badakhshan, told Reuters.
"He cannot delay this anymore," she said.
She echoed several other successful candidates in saying that the attorney general's office did not have the authority to call for the election result to be annulled.
"The palace is behind this. Karzai is not happy with the results," Kufi said.
Karzai has been critical of the poll, which is likely to have produced a parliament with a larger, more vocal and coherent opposition than the previous chamber.
"CONSIDERABLE FRAUD"
Candidates stood as individuals, not as members of parties, and the parliament, like the previous one, is a diverse mixture of representatives of ethnic groups and various political forces as well as independents.
There will likely be larger groups of ethnic Tajiks and Hazaras who may challenge Karzai's traditional power base among Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group.
However, Afghan parliaments do not have a history of organised opposition and members tend to vote along tribal and ethnic lines, or according to personal positions on issues.
Attorney General Ishaq Aloko, who was appointed by Karzai, has not been available for comment since television reported late on Saturday that his office had asked the Supreme Court to cancel the election results. [ID:n SGE6BB00V ]
Hafizullah Hafiz, the head of the complaints section in the attorney general's office, said a letter had been sent to the court asking it to scrap the results and order a recount.
The legality of such a move was in doubt, analysts said.
Supreme Court spokesman Abdul Wakil Omari said candidates could refer individual complaints to the court but was vague when asked whether it had the authority to cancel the whole election. The court had not received anything from the attorney general's office, he said.
The U.N. mission in Afghanistan has congratulated election officials for conducting a vote in the middle of an insurgency, but has also noted "considerable fraud" took place.
It also said on Dec. 1 it looked forward to the "prompt" inauguration of the 249-seat wolesi jirga, or lower house, "as an important further step in Afghanistan's strengthening of its democratic governance".
Dozens of candidates and election officials are being investigated and the Independent Election Commission has thrown out about a quarter of the 5.6 million votes cast as fake.
Disgruntled unsuccessful candidates and supporters have been protesting, calling for the result to be scrapped. Some say failure to address grievances would push Afghans towards an insurgency at its worst since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. (Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Robert Birsel) (If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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