Afghan President Hamid Karzai insisted today his country's elections must be held in September despite a United Nations warning that the polls may have to be delayed unless security improves.
"Having promised the Afghan people elections in the month of September and having had this remarkable success with the registration of voters we must go and we should go for elections in September," Mr Karzai told a news conference in Istanbul after meeting Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
Afghanistan urged Nato yesterday to deploy troops where they are most needed to protect the elections, as violence continues to underscore the country's lack of security.
A Nato official initially told reporters its current force of 6,500 troops would rise to about 10,000 during the vote but later said this would include forces on standby outside the country.
But Nato vowed to beef up its peace force in Afghanistan by taking command of four military-civilian reconstruction teams in the north and sending a quick reaction force of up to 1,000 to Kabul.
This would be a numerical increase of about 2,200 troops at best by the time of the polls - far short of the 5,000 the United Nations and the government had been seeking to protect a vote which Taliban militants have vowed to disrupt.
