Karzai names new cabinet nominees

President Hamid Karzai submitted a second list of nominees for Afghanistan's cabinet Saturday, a week after the country's parliament rejected 70 per cent of his first slate of candidates.

Karzai's new list does not include the names of the 17 nominees who failed to win parliamentary approval.

Second Vice-President Karim Khalili announced 16 ministerial candidates, including Almay Rasoul, Karzai's national security adviser.

The president did not submit names to replace Ishmail Khan, a warlord who had been serving as minister of water and energy but was rejected in the Jan. 2 vote.

"I request that all the parliamentarians think about the national interest of the country, the current situation of the country and the desires of the Afghan people and make a good decision," Khalili said as he read the names to parliament.

The U.S. and other donor nations have been pressing Karzai to get his cabinet assembled ahead of an international conference on Afghanistan to be held Jan. 28 in London.

Karzai's credibility both at home and abroad was shaken by the fraud-plagued presidential elections in August.

In the first vote on the cabinet nominees, politicians rejected nominees viewed as Karzai's political cronies, those believed to be under the influence of warlords and others deemed unqualified.

Last week, parliament did approve Karzai's retention of incumbents in the key portfolios of defence, interior, finance and agriculture.

There are three women on the new list, a record number after years in which the only female minister held the women's affairs portfolio. Parliamentarians had voted down the only woman named to the cabinet last week, the incumbent minister of women's affairs.