A day after the inauguration of Afghanistan's first parliament in decades, lawmakers yesterday picked an ex-president to head the upper house, but squabbled over how to chose the influential leader of the lower house.

Elusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, meanwhile, issued a rare statement, denouncing the new legislature as "bogus" and a means for the United States to consolidate its grip on the country. He vowed to step up resistance.

Sibghatullah Mojadidi, president of the first mujahideen (holy warrior) government of the early 1990s, was picked to head the 102-seat upper house, or Meshrano Jirga (Elders' Assembly), a spokeswoman for parliament's secretariat said.

Mojadidi, a close ally of President Hamid Karzai and seen as a moderate, will serve for the five-year term of the parliament.

The mujahideen government he headed came to power after Muslim guerrillas overthrew a Soviet-backed regime in 1992, but its members started fighting amongst themselves and were eventually replaced by the Taliban.

Amid emotional opening exchanges in the lower house, deputies disagreed on how to choose a house leader, but agreed to discuss the issue today, pro-Karzai lawmaker Khalid Pashtun said.

He described the session as very emotional," with "lots of objections and criticisms" and everyone trying to speak at once.

Mullah Omar called the parliament a bogus American creation.

"Afghans know that a few Afghans have sold Afghanistan to the Americans and these sorts of fake parliaments and democracy will not change the opinion of Afghan people," he said in a statement read over the telephone by a Taliban spokesman.

(China Daily December 21, 2005)