A UN-sponsored program to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate around 100,000 fighters across Afghanistan is scheduled to get under way in the war-ravaged country on July 1, a government minister said on Wednesday.

　　The fighters are soldiers who are nominally under the defense ministry, but many are in reality loyal to warlords.

　　In the first two months, weapons will be collected from 6,000 fighters in Bamiyan in the north, Khost in the east, and Kunduz in the north, said Urban Affairs Minister Yusuf Pashtun.

　　The process - expected to last at least two years - will be stepped up soon after.

　　"Definitely we'll increase the numbers in the future," said Pashtun, who is also vice chairman of the govern-ment's Demobilization and Reintegration Commission. "We have to get experience ... and we'll expand it later."

　　Pashtun said he expected major Defense Ministry reforms to also take place before July 1.

　　The United Nations has urged Afghan authorities to speed up the reforms, which are aimed at making the Defense Ministry more ethnically balanced and are key to the disarmament campaign.

　　The Defense Ministry is supposed to play a leading role in collecting weapons from Afghanistan's myriad factions, but critics say the process won't be easy as long as top posts are controlled by minority ethnic Tajiks such as Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, whose troops swept into Kabul after the Taliban were toppled.

　　"As far as we understand, it is fully understood that the reforms should be completed by July 1. I have no reason to doubt it at the moment," Pashtun said.