KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai was expected to announce a new cabinet line-up on Thursday that will sideline leaders of powerful regional factions, political sources said.

Karzai won Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election more than two months ago, and analysts regard his cabinet list as the real test of whether he can usher in a new era of stability after a quarter century of conflict.

"It will be released later tonight," a government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Karzai has headed an interim government for the past three years and after winning the Oct. 9 poll was expected to weed out military figures and bring in people with the education and experience needed to reassure Western donors.

Mohammed Qasim Fahim (Farzana Wahidy/AFP/Getty Images) and Yunus Qanuni (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP)

Political insiders said he has dumped Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim and will also exclude Yunus Qanuni, the runner-up in the presidential poll.

Under a constitution written early this year, cabinet members must have higher education degrees, not just fighting credentials. Karzai has also decided that any person with dual nationality must renounce citizenship of their second country. Karzai was compelled to include several powerful regional military leaders in his earlier cabinet in view of the continuing chaotic security situation after 2001, when the United States ousted the ruling Taliban and the al Qaeda network it protected as part of its war on terror.

U.S., NATO and government forces continue to fight an insurgency inspired by Taliban militants and al Qaeda remnants, and are still looking for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden along the border with Pakistan.

Picking ministers was never going to be straightforward in a country riven by ethnic divisions and lacking a large educated class. Karzai's own Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group but not a majority.

The most powerful ministries are Defense and Interior, as they control security forces.

One political veteran predicted the defense minister would be Rahim Wardak, an ethnic Pashtun and a former army general who received military training in the United States. He served as deputy defense minister in the interim government.

Fahim, a commander of the Northern Alliance that helped drive the Taliban from power, fell out with Karzai in the run-up to the presidential poll.

He and Qanuni are both ethnic Tajiks and leaders of the Panjsheri faction formerly headed by the assassinated resistance leader Ahmad Shah Masood.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, another leader of the Panjsheri faction, will retain his position as foreign minister, according to sources.

But Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, a former World Bank official holding U.S. citizenship, will be replaced, most probably by another experienced technocrat with links to the West.

Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali will keep his post provided he gives up his U.S. passport, sources said.

Karzai's cabinet choices will need approval from the National Assembly once it is convened after a parliamentary election which is scheduled for April but may be delayed.