KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai was holding talks with lawmakers Saturday to try to break a deadlock over his plan to delay opening a new parliament after the West said it should meet as soon as possible.
Karzai was scheduled to have lunch with a delegation of legislators who have threatened to inaugurate parliament on Sunday without him, in open defiance of his authority.
The meeting was scheduled to take place hours after the United States and the United Nations called for the parliament to meet as quickly as possible, further ratcheting up the pressure on Karzai.
The UN's mission in Afghanistan also voiced "deep concern" at the delay.
"We will go and have lunch with the president at his invitation today," the current speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Younus Qanooni, told reporters at a meeting of nearly 200 winning lawmakers plus reporters at a Kabul hotel.
"We will inaugurate the parliament in a peaceful manner tomorrow," he added, while saying that he also wanted the president to take part.
The talks will be the first face-to-face meeting between Karzai, whose spokesmen were not contactable for comment, and his opponents in the stand-off. He has just returned from a two-day official visit to Russia.
Karzai's office announced on Wednesday that the inauguration of the new Wolesi Jirga, originally expected to take place on Sunday, had been postponed until February 22.
The announcement followed a call from the head of a special tribunal, which is considering more than 400 cases of alleged electoral fraud in September's parliamentary polls, for a delay of at least a month.
The tribunal head, Judge Sidiqullah Haqiq, warned that his body could still rule in favour of recounts.
As well as being hit by fraud and violence, the original parliamentary polls resulted in a weak showing for the Pashtuns, Karzai's traditional power base and Afghanistan's biggest single ethnic group.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Friday that the US government was trying to help find a solution.
"We're working to try to resolve this, but we've made clear, as has the UN, that we believe that parliament should convene as soon as possible," Crowley said.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) expressed "deep concern and surprise at the recent call to delay the inauguration of the national assembly" in a statement Friday.
It added: "UNAMA, the European Union, the United States, Canada and other concerned members of the international community continue to support a reasonable, enduring and peaceful resolution to this issue ... so that parliament can convene as soon as possible.
"Afghanistan's peaceful future lies in the building up of robust democratic institutions based on the rule of law and clear respect for the separation of powers."
International troops fighting the Pashtun-dominated Taliban are due to start limited withdrawals in July ahead of Afghan forces assuming control of security in 2014.
Experts disagree on the constitutional status of a parliament inaugurated without Karzai.
Afghanistan's Constitutional Oversight Commission, a watchdog nominated by Karzai and approved by parliament, says it cannot discuss the issue because it has not been officially referred to it.
The plan to go ahead without the president appears to have the support of a majority of Afghan lawmakers.
But it is not yet clear how many will turn up on Sunday and whether they will be allowed to sit in the parliament building itself or will have to convene elsewhere.
Nor has the international community in Afghanistan said whether it will send representatives to the event.
After the original parliamentary poll in September, electoral authorities disqualified 24 early winners, including allies of the president, and threw out around a quarter of about five million votes cast.
The attorney general's office later called for the results to be annulled, saying the vote was marred by massive fraud. Karzai has yet to endorse the outcome.
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