HIGHLIGHTS: Power Struggle Briefly Threatens Government||Justice & Women's Affairs Portfolios Still to Be Named||Fears That Warlords Will Continue Forming Fiefdoms Ruled by The Gun Still a Major Threat|| STORY: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has given former interior minister Yunis Qanuni a new job as a special security adviser, an official said on Saturday, after a power struggle which had briefly threatened the government. (Read photo caption)
After naming just over half his cabinet on Wednesday, Karzai has now virtually completed the cabinet, giving the powerful Qanuni a new role to supplement the education ministry portfolio he had already been offered.

"Except for justice and women's affairs, all cabinet members were named today," Ahmad Bahin said. "Apart from being minister of education, he (Qanuni) will also serve as adviser to Karzai in internal security affairs."

Karzai, in a bid to produce a more ethnically balanced cabinet than his previous government, offered the interior ministry to an ethnic Pashtun on Wednesday.

But Qanuni's Tajik supporters, who form the backbone of police and security forces in Kabul, had demonstrated outside the ministry to show their displeasure.

Now Karzai has been forced to compromise, although it is unclear how responsibility for security will be divided between Qanuni and new Interior Minister Taj Mohammad Wardak.

Karzai's previous government was dominated by a close-knit group of ethnic Tajiks from the Panjsher Valley -- including Qanuni -- leaders of the Northern Alliance who played a leading role in the downfall of the Taliban last year with U.S. help.

Other ethnic groups had hoped that the recently concluded Loya Jirga, or Grand Assembly, would have yielded greater representation for Pashtuns and Uzbeks among others.

But Karzai's new cabinet appears to show the Northern Alliance and its Tajik leaders still firmly in power, with the key defense and foreign ministries still in their hands.

Two portfolios, civil aviation and tourism, and public works, were taken from the supporters of former king Mohammad Zahir Shah and given to Northern Alliance supporters.

The fear is that without a government representing all tribal and political interests, warlords and other factional leaders in the provinces will continue to create their own fiefdoms ruled by the gun.

Karzai's first government was put together during peace talks in Bonn last year after the fall of the Taliban. The Loya Jirga, a traditional assembly of elders, elected him as president earlier this month to serve for another 18 months.

PHOTO CAPTION

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to announce the remaining members of his cabinet June 22, 2002 as he struggles to satisfy important commanders and different ethnic groups, advisers said. Karzai speaks before delegates on the final day of Afghanistan's Loya Jirga tribal assembly on June 19. (Caren Firouz/Reuter