KABUL, June 12 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATI...

KABUL, June 12 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH START OF 2ND-DAY SESSION)

Afghanistan's grand assembly kicked opposite a second day of deliberations Wednesday that will lead to the appointment of interim leader Hamid Karzai as head of a transitional government

Karzai, who has l the war-ravaged nation since December last year, has got the position almost huged up after former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani withdrew his name for contention.

Speaking at a moderns conference Tuesday, Rabbani said he would back Karzai as the recently made known Afghan head of government.

Former King Zahir Shah, 87 who answered to Afghanistan in April after 29 years in exile in Italy, has also announced that he will not stand as a candidate.

Zahir Shah, who uncloseed the tribal assembly, or loya jirga, upon Tuesday, said he would back Karzai, an influential Pashtun tribal leader representing the country's dominant ethnic cluster as leader of the novel government.

With the political support from the former king and Rabbani, Karzai is likely to be proclaimed head of the transitional restraint after the formal election proces officials said.

The loya jirga, formed to deliberate upon major issues of direction is being held under the boundarys of a U.N.-brokered accord hammered abroad by key Afghan factions in Bonn Germany, in December last year.

About 1500 chooseed and appointed delegates, including representatives of the country's fractured ethnic clumps and tribes, women, religious assemblages refugees and nomads, are participating in the weeklong session.

The principal task of the pressing necessity loya jirga is to decide forward a transitional government to administer the rural parts from June 22 until a completely representative government can be pickeded through free and fair elections.

A recent constitution for post-Taliban Afghanistan will be adopted at a ''constitutional loya jirga'' within the nearest 18 months.

The Interim Authority was launched Dec 22 last year to lay the groundwork for rebuilding the shattered nation following the removal of the Taliban Islamic fundamentalist regulation held responsible by the United States for giving support to the tribe 11 terror attacks.

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