KABUL – President Hamid Karzai accused the West yesterday of trying to ruin Afghanistan’s elections, intensifying a showdown with parliament over whether foreigners will oversee a parliamentary vote this year.
Mr Karzai’s international reputation took a beating after a UN-backed fraud watchdog threw out one-third of the votes cast for him in last year’s presidential election. He is now wrangling with parliament and the UN over fraud-protection measures for a parliamentary vote due in September.
“Foreigners will make excuses, they do not want us to have a parliamentary election,” a defiant Mr Karzai told election officials. “They want parliament to be weakened and battered, and for me to be an ineffective president and for parliament to be ineffective.
“You have gone through the kind of elections during which you were not only threatened with terror, you also faced massive interference from foreigners,” he said. “Some embassies also tried to bribe the members of the commission.”
In Washington, state department spokesman PJ Crowley rejected Mr Karzai’s accusations the West wanted to see the Afghan parliament weakened and for him to be ineffective. “We do not accept that judgment,” Mr Crowley said.
What was important, he said, was that Mr Karzai be seen by his own people as governing effectively and that he take “measurable” steps against corruption. “Karzai has to step forward,” he told reporters.
Mr Karzai singled out Peter Galbraith, the American former deputy of the UN mission in Kabul, sacked after accusing his boss of turning a blind eye to fraud, and French general Philippe Morillon, head of an EU vote-monitoring mission.
“There was fraud in the presidential and provincial election, with no doubt there was massive fraud. This wasn’t fraud by Afghans but the fraud of foreigners, the fraud of Galbraith, of Morillon and the votes of the Afghan nation were in the control of an embassy,” Mr Karzai said.
He accused Mr Galbraith of telling an election official he would be “digging himself an early grave” if Mr Karzai was declared first-round winner and said Gen Morillon had tried to block the announcement of results to force him to accept a political alliance.
Mr Galbraith could not be reached for comment.
Last year’s election stand-off – which ended when the UN-backed body ordered a second round but Mr Karzai’s opponent quit – eroded support in the West for the eight-year-old war.
A new election confrontation could further sour public opinion in a decisive year, when Washington is sending an extra 30,000 troops.
Ahead of September’s parliamentary poll, Mr Karzai issued a decree in February revoking the power of the UN to appoint the majority of members of the election fraud watchdog.
The lower house of parliament rejected Karzai’s decree on Wednesday, a move diplomats described as a rebuke for the president, although the motion would still need to pass in the upper house to restore UN oversight.
Mr Karzai told the election officials and reporters his decree was vital to Afghanistan’s sovereignty.
The United Nations has called for reforms to Afghanistan’s election commission to prevent fraud before it will agree to free up donor funds needed to pay for the September 18th vote.
UN spokesman Farhan Haq said it would not comment on Mr Karzai’s accusations.
“We have made clear the efforts by the United Nations to determine and to deal with allegations of fraud and we stand by that.” – (Reuters)