Afghan loya jirga voting going well

Officials in northern Afghanistan say voting for delegates to the grand assembly, or Loya Jirga, has ended in Jowzjan province -- the first area to complete the process.

The deputy defence minister and most powerful man in northern Afghanistan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, said the process across the north was going well.

The United Nations says around four-thousand-six-hundred delegates have already been chosen in the first stage of the selection process, and that voting has taken place in almost a-hundred districts. In the next stage, the delegates must choose the final one-thousand-five-hundred representatives who will sit in the Loya Jirga.

It will meet in June to decide on a government to run the country until full elections can be held.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service