Afghan President Hamid Karzai will submit at least part of his long-awaited cabinet to parliament within days, amid mounting Western pressure to wipe out corruption, officials said Saturday. Re-elected for a second term following an August election scarred by vote vote-rigging and ballot stuffing, Karzai is under huge domestic and foreign pressure to form a transparent government to help end a Taliban insurgency. “In consultation with elders, influentials, politicians and Afghan experts the president will introduce the full or partial list of the new cabinet to parliament in the course of this week,” said Karzai spokesman Hamid Elmi. Parliament must pass a vote of confidence in the cabinet before the new Afghan government can start work. Lawmakers were scheduled to break for winter recess Sunday, but a parliament spokesman said the house had extended “to finish debating and passing the mid-year budget” albeit without mentioning the cabinet. Karzai has already inaugurated Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a former anti-Soviet resistance leader and an anti-Taliban commander, as his first vice president. Karzai's outgoing caretaker government is made up of 25 cabinet ministers. NATO offensive US, British and Afghan troops pushed deeper into Taliban villages in the first major offensive since President Barack Obama unveiled a new war strategy, an official said Saturday. More than 1,000 forces are sweeping through part of the southern province of Helmand to oust the Taliban from one of the key battlegrounds in Afghanistan, allow development to begin and civilians to return to deserted villages. “The operation in Now Zad district is ongoing,” southern Afghan military corp commander Gen. Shair Mohammad Zazai said. “We have cleared some villages but there have not been any casualties on our side or to the enemy today. So far four militants have been killed as part the the operation,” Zazai added. Meanwhile, British opposition leader David Cameron met troops in Afghanistan and said he believed troop withdrawals were unlikely to happen in 2010. Cameron, on a visit to Helmand, said British forces were spread too thinly across the troubled southern province. French oppose more troops More than 80 percent of French people are against Paris sending more troops to Afghanistan, according to an opinion poll carried out for a regional newspaper. The Ifop poll for the weekly Sud Ouest Dimanche showed 82 percent opposed to reinforcements for the some 3,300 French troops already in Afghanistan.
