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Kerry in Afghanistan, Seeks Path in Voting Crisis

Kerry in Afghanistan, Seeks Path in Voting Crisis
folder_openAfghanistan access_time9 years ago
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Local Editor

US Secretary of State John Kerry sought Friday to broker a deal between Afghanistan's rival presidential candidates as a bitter dispute over last month's runoff election risked spiraling out of control.

Kerry in Afghanistan, Seeks Path in Voting CrisisKerry, who arrived predawn in Kabul on a hastily arranged visit, is meeting with former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah as well as the current leader, President Hamid Karzai.

The objective is to convince both candidates to hold off on declaring victory or trying to set up a government until the United Nations can conduct an audit of extensive fraud allegations in the voting.

"We are in a very, very critical moment for Afghanistan," Kerry told reporters after meeting the UN chief in Afghanistan, Jan Kubis. "Legitimacy hangs in the balance. The future potential of the transition hangs in the balance. So we've a lot of work to do."
The hope, Kerry said, was to create a process that confers legitimacy on whoever emerges as the rightful leader of Afghanistan. "But I can't tell you that's an automatic at this point."

For his part, Kubis said the UN was searching for an election result "that strengthens stability and unity in the country, and not the other way around."
With Iraq wracked by insurgency, Afghanistan's election is posing a new challenge to President Barack Obama's effort to leave behind two secure states while ending America's long wars.
Both Ghani and Abdullah have vowed to sign a bilateral security pact with Washington, which says it needs the legal guarantees in order to leave behind some 10,000 boots on the ground in Afghanistan after most American troops are withdrawn at the end of the year.

If no clear leader emerges, the US may have to pull out all its forces, an unwanted scenario that played out in Iraq just three years ago. Karzai has refused to sign the agreement, leaving it in the hands of his successor.

Kerry will seek a commitment from both candidates to hold off from rash action while the ballots are examined and political leaders are consulted across Afghanistan's ethnic spectrum.

Obama spoke to each candidate this week, warning that any move outside the law to seize power would mean the end of US financial aid to Afghanistan.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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