Some Afghan lawmakers denounce war crimes amnesty resolution, contend it won't go further

(AP) A group of lawmakers on Monday denounced a nonbinding resolution passed by Afghanistan's lower house of parliament calling for amnesty for warlords and other Afghans accused of war crimes during a quarter-century of fighting.

The resolution, which was criticized by U.N. officials when it passed by a show of hands last week, has no chance of winning passage in parliament's upper house, the nine lawmakers predicted.

Legislator Kabir Rangabar said he and other lawmakers didn't get a chance to read the resolution before the hand vote was taken. The lawmakers said they were speaking on behalf of 20 members of parliament, representing the third-biggest political group in the lower house.

"I'm sure the people who lost their lives during the communist rule and during the civil war would not forgive" warlords, lawmaker Shinkai Karukhail said Monday.

The amnesty resolution covers the mujahedeen leaders who led the resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and later turned their fighters on one another, plunging the country into civil war.

Lawmaker Sayed Mustafa Kazmi, who backed the resolution, said last week that it was aimed at fostering national unity.

But rights activists have called for Afghanistan's factional leaders and warlords to be prosecuted for the massacres and torture they allegedly committed in their struggle for power, especially during the 1992-96 civil war.

The U.N. human rights chief, Louise Arbour, criticized the resolution Friday, saying it could lead to warlords who committed serious war crimes going unpunished.

"Experience has shown time and again that effective and durable national reconciliation must be based on respect for international human rights standards and the rule of law, and must not come at their expense," she said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has published a report calling for trials for such Afghan officials as Vice President Karim Khalili and Army Chief of Staff Abdul Rashid Dostum as well as Taliban leader Mullah Omar and fugitive warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.