KABUL, Dec 23 (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has appointed a new cabinet which pushes out warlords and installs technocrats capable of fighting drugs and driving reform, the presidential palace said Thursday.
Karzai, who won historic October elections, dropped two major figures from the Northern Alliance group of generals who helped the United States topple the Taliban in 2001, the palace said, officially announcing the cabinet line-up.
Former defence minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim and Yunus Qanooni, who stepped down as education minister to run against Karzai for president, were pushed out.
Karzai picked out highly educated ministers likely to curry favour with western donors anxious to see Afghanistan push forward with reform, and also cut the number of ministries to 27 from 30.
"Nine of the ministers have PhDs," a governmental source told AFP, adding Karzai had chosen an ethically-balanced cabinet.
However, Karzai retained former warlord Ismael Khan who was ousted as governor of Herat in September. He steps in as minister of energy in charge of rebuilding the country's fractured power sector.
Karzai also kept Abdullah Abdullah as foreign minister but dropped Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai as finance minister. Appointed in his place is Anwar Ul-Haq Ahady, who was praised by the west for his work in setting up Afghanistan's central bank.
The only female candidate in Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election, Masooda Jalal, won a place at the head of the Ministry of Women's Affairs.
Another appointment likely to win plaudits from the west is Abdul Rahim Wardak, as the new defence minister. The anti-Soviet fighter rose to prominence in the 1980s and later fled to the United States.
Wardak has been seen as a key figure behind a United Nations-backed program which has so far disarmed almost 30,000 former militia fighters -- about half of those estimated to remain in the war-torn country.
Karzai kept Ali Ahmed Jalali as interior minister in another apparent boost boost for reformists who are pushing for a stronger central government to restore law and order and curb the burgeoning opium industry.
A US citizen, Jalali will need to renounce his dual nationality to remain as head of the Interior Ministry, where he was seen foreigners and Afghans alike as having a reputation for efficiency.
The Afghan constitution written early this year says cabinet members must have higher education degrees -- ruling out many former mujahedin fighters -- and any with dual nationality should be vetted by a parliament that has still to be elected.
He also picked out engineer and former deputy minister of refugees Habibullah Qaderi as key anti-narcotics minister.
Qaderi, an ethnic Pashtun like Karzai, is tasked with cutting opium production in Afghanistan, which now produces 87 percent of the world's supply.
Karzai had prompted speculation by the length of time he took to decide on his line-up -- seven weeks after he was pronounced the winner of the elections and more than two weeks after he was inaugurated.
12/23/2004 15:23 GMT - AFP