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Karzai's rival Abdullah backs election run-off in Afghanistan
Ed Harris21 Oct 2009
Hamid Karzai's chief political rival today agreed to stand in Afghanistan's November run-off, removing one crucial obstacle in the race to get the election in place.
Abdullah Abdullah said he telephoned the president to thank him for agreeing to a second-round ballot. He said the run-off would "help democracy in this country and strengthen the faith of the people in the democratic process". Mr Abdullah spoke for the first time since Mr Karzai bowed to international pressure yesterday and accepted the findings of a UN-backed panel that there had been massive fraud by his supporters in the 20 August election.
Findings showed Mr Karzai failed to win the 50 per cent required to avoid a run-off and more than a million votes cast for Karzai have been thrown out.
Afghan officials face a formidable task. As winter looms, snow threatens to make many areas inaccessible to voters and election observers. The dangers posed by the Taliban cannot be ignored, with an escalating wave of attacks. There are also fears that the corruption that marred the first poll may not be rooted out. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned election officials: "We will advise the Independent Election Commission not to re-recruit those officials who might have been involved in fraudulent electoral processes."
The UN wants to get more than half the senior officials involved in the election replaced, he said. The 200 officials complicit in fraud should be sacked to ensure the run-off vote was "transparent and credible".
The run-off presents a predicament for Barack Obama. No matter who wins, it leaves the United States wedded to a shaky government in which corruption appears to have become second nature. "This has been a very difficult time in Afghanistan to not only carry out an election under difficult circumstances, where there were a whole host of security issues that had to be resolved, but also post-election a lot of uncertainty," the President said.
He remained silent over plans for a surge of US troops in Afghanistan, a tactic which was shelved after the botched August voting.
The White House warned at the weekend that no more soldiers would be deployed until a political resolution was reached.
Senator John Kerry said: "You have to learn from mistakes, and everybody needs to do that here."
