With Additional Reporting By Mutiullah Taeb, IOL Asia Correspondent

KABUL, June 20 (IslamOnline & New Agencies) - Afghanistan's powerful Northern Alliance figure Yunus Qanooni has turned down transitional President Hamid Karzai’s offer of the post of education minister, sources close to Qanooni said Thursday, June 20.

Qanooni, who was interior minister in Karzai's previous six-month interim administration, was upset and had decided to stay at home for the day, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The announcement was made without his consultation in a very hasty and indecent way," one official close to Qanooni told AFP.

"He is upset now and has decided to stay at home," he said, adding that Karzai had dispatched emissaries in a bid to placate him.

Qanooni is a leading member of the Jamiat faction of the Northern Alliance that pushed the Taliban regime out of Kabul with the aid of the U.S. military bombing in November, 2001.

His party colleagues Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Abdullah Abdullah held their respective posts as defense and foreign ministers.

Karzai announced his choice of Qanooni as education minister Wednesday, June 19, in front of 1,600-strong Loya Jirga traditional assembly - a post which he accepted with a silent nod.

The official, who said he is in regular contact with Qanooni, said his boss was also unhappy over the failure of the Loya Jirga to create a parliament, an issue which dragged the tribal assembly into three days of overtime.

"He believes a parliament should have been created and there should have been a prime minister," he said.

In the new cabinet, the Pashtuns acquired a big role, while ethnic Tajiks Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Abdullah Abdullah kept their powerful posts as Defense and Foreign Affairs Minister respectively.

Karzai satisfied ethnic demands by handing the interior and finance portfolios to Pashtuns, Taj Mohammad Wardak and Ashraf Ghani.

Analysts say that Karzai was able to satisfy the Pashtuns, who consider themselves a majority in the country as they ruled the country for the last 250 years.

The Pashtuns have also gained the leadership of the Higher Supreme court, as the Maulawi Fadl Al-Hady Shinoray, a Pashtun from East Afghanistan, was appointed the head of the court, taking the number of the Pashtuns in important administrative positions to 4, as Karzai and the ministers of interior and finance are Pahtuns.

The Shi’a Hazaras maintained the ministry of planning, an important ministry in Afghanistan that will oversee reconstruction. This shows how much Karzai realizes the importance of their role in the new Afghanistan, considering the regional importance of the Hazaras’ relations with Iran.

Karzai further chose a number of high-profile deputies, including: Mohamed Fahim Qassem (Defense Minister), Shi’a Wahda Party leader Karim Khalily (a Hazara), and ruler of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar Hajj Abdel Kadir (Pashtun).

Karzai is also expected to choose an Uzbek and female deputies.

Meanwhile, Kabul's police force was in a state of high alert Thursday over the removal of Qanooni from the interior ministry in transitional president Hamid Karzai's unfinished cabinet, AFP said.

Residents said many roundabouts leading to the interior ministry in downtown Kabul were closed for several hours Thursday morning.

Ministry staff said their offices were almost empty and at least a dozen police officers were seen wandering around the building surrounded by heavily armed guards.

"The interior ministry is on high alert because the people say why Qanooni Saheb has been transferred. He should come back," officer Mohammad Halim, who was standing guard at the ministry's entrance, told AFP.

"It is a state of high alert and strike.

"We do not like [new Interior Minister Taj Mohammad] Wardak, because we do not know him and we want the return of Qanooni," he said.

Another guard said the atmosphere inside the ministry was tense.

"The situation is not normal, the personnel are panicked and the offices are empty," he said. "Some predict skirmishes might break out," he added.

Qanooni, a political heavyweight of the dominant Northern Alliance, was named as Karzai's new education minister late Wednesday.

He was replaced at the interior ministry by Wardak, an ethnic Pashtun who is governor of southern Paktia province, in the part-cabinet announced by Karzai at the closing session of the Loya Jirga grand assembly late Wednesday.

Qanooni had earlier resigned his interior ministry post in front of the Loya Jirga grand assembly in what he described as a move aimed at "strengthening the national unity".

However, many observers suspected him stepping down to prepare a leadership challenge for Afghanistan's first full elections in 2004.

Karzai told reporters Thursday that the interior ministry staff had to obey their new boss, Wardak.

"Police in Afghanistan have to be disciplined. They have to take orders. The interior minister is the interior minister, period," said Karzai.

Karzai has announced a total of 14 cabinet ministers and is expected to complete the appointments over the next few days. He has said he would reduce the number of ministries from the present 29 without specifying a new figure.