Karzai says will change Shi'a law if unconstitutional

By Jonathon Burch

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai promised Wednesday to make changes to a new law for Shi'ite Muslims, if any part is found to violate the constitution, after provisions on women's rights caused an international uproar.

Karzai said he had met the justice minister and the country's most senior religious leaders to discuss the law, which has already been passed by parliament and signed by Karzai but has not yet come into effect.

The law is meant to legalize minority Shi'ite family law, which is different than that for the majority Sunni population.

But it has provoked an outcry among Afghanistan's Western allies concerned about its potential impact on women's rights in the former Taliban state. U.S. President Barack Obama has called the law "abhorrent."

Karzai last week said Western concerns about the new law were "inappropriate" and may have been based on "misinterpretations," but has ordered his government to check it does not violate the constitution or Islamic law.

"We have already initiated procedures to correct, if there is anything of concern, that (it) should be changed," Karzai told a news conference alongside his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski, who was visiting the Afghan capital.

"If there is any article in the law that is not in keeping with the Afghan constitution...it should be corrected in consultation with our clergy, in accordance to the constitution and our Islamic Sharia," Karzai added.

Shi'ite Muslims account for some 15 percent of the population of mainly Sunni Muslim Afghanistan and the wide-ranging Shi'ite Personal Status Law aims to enshrine differences between the two sects.