KABUL - After a chaotic day on Monday, in which a number of Senators were caught in a brawl during a heated debate, the Upper House quashed tensions on Tuesday and was able to vote and approve changes to 2014 budget draft.

Paktika Senator Khan Mohammad Khagai, who attacked Senate Deputy Mohammad Alam Ezedyar with a bottle during the Monday session, apologized for his behavior on Tuesday.

"I apologize to Mr. Ezedyar and the other senators," Khagai said. "Yesterday's occurrence was not acceptable, Mr. Ezedyar and me are close friends, anyway, sometimes such things happen."

The incident erupted around a debate over the issue of including ethnicity on new electronic ID cards all citizens are expected to hold.

"My request for all Senators is that we respect each other," Ezedyar said on Tuesday. "Provoking ethnicity issues is not beneficial."

Conciliatory language and overtures were the theme of Tuesday, after Monday's session was thrown off schedule due to the chaos caused by the tussle.

"All Afghan are brothers. Hazara, Tajik, Ozbek and Pashtoon are brothers. All should try to bring sovereignty to the country," Senate Speaker Fazl Hadi Muslimyar said.

Tuesday's session began two hours late after all the apologies and appeals to national unity were made. And with the remaining time, the Senators were able to discuss increasing the budgets of some provinces and the changes were finally approved, wrapping up debate over next year's spending.

The total budget for the next year is 444,192,000,000 AFG, of which 275,750,178,000 AFG is for the normal budget and 168,442,460,000 is for the development budget.

The Ministers of Education and Higher Education were expected to be summoned to the Senate on Tuesday. But after things got a late start, with amends from Monday being made to start things off, there was no time left on the agenda. (Tolo News)