The Kabul government in Afghanistan today announced plans to disarm tens of thousands of fighters throughout the country beginning next month.
But it said reform of the Defence Ministry, which is dominated by a small but powerful ethnic Tajik faction under Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, must first be addressed.
The nationwide disarmament programme aims to collect weapons handed in voluntarily by men on the Defence Ministry payroll, a cabinet minister said.
The programme, being funded by donor countries, will take up to three years to disarm an estimated 100,000 men.
They will be found alternative jobs or will be recruited into the fledgling national army, said Mr Mohammad Yusuf Pashtun, minister of urban development and housing.
"But this cannot happen without reforms in the Defence Ministry," Mr Pashtun told a news conference. "The reforms should be completed by July when we expect to start the programme; this is a precondition for the whole programme."
UN adviser Sultan Aziz said Afghanistan needed up to $200 million to complete the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) plan and failure to find the money could derail the whole process.
Some of the weapons collected would be allocated to the new army or held by international observers, Aziz said.
Japan, which is providing most of the money for the programme, is keen to promote security and reconstruction in war-torn Afghanistan, a Japanese diplomat said.