White House sees victory for Karzai again

Elisabeth Bumiller | New Delhi | 26 October 2009 |

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently said that the Obama administration expected President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to win an anticipated runoff election and that the vote would not affect President Obama’s decision about whether to send more troops to the country. But other administration officials said it was possible that if the runoff was held quickly and the results were known by mid-November, Mr Obama might delay his decision on troops until then. Until now, White House advisers have said they expect Mr Obama to make his decision by late October or early November.

In an interview with CNN, Mrs Clinton said of Mr Karzai that “I think one can conclude that the likelihood of him winning a second round is probably pretty high.” She also said that Mr Obama would make his decision “on his own timetable” and not link it to the election results.

Afghan and American officials say they expect an Afghan election commission to announce Saturday that Mr Karzai received less than 50 per cent of the vote in the Aug 20 election, which was marred by widespread evidence of fraud and ballot-stuffing for Mr Karzai. Based on those results, a runoff would be required under the Afghan Constitution.

Afghan and American officials say it is imperative that the second election occur by early November, before cold weather closes roads, making voting impossible before the spring. Even so, officials say that preparing for an election in such a short time will be extraordinarily difficult. Mr Obama has another meeting scheduled for late next week to discuss whether to send more troops. An administration official said that more meetings were anticipated for the following week. Mr Karzai’s main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, hinted this week that he might be willing to enter into a power-sharing agreement with Mr Karzai, and Mr Karzai’s ambassador to Washington, Said Tayeb Jawad, did not reject the idea. But it is unclear if such a deal would be allowed under the Afghan Constitution.

The Obama administration has grown increasingly dispirited about what it sees as the many failures in Mr Karzai’s government, and has spent large parts of its meetings debating whether it would make more sense to focus on building up a stronger relationship with the country’s regional leaders. Mrs Clinton told CNN that Mr Obama was looking at “how we can have a different and more effective relationship with the Afghanistan government, whoever is the final victor, but not only with the government in Kabul, but with governors throughout the country, with what they call sub-national, regional, local leaders. And there’s been a lot of thought given as to how we would do that.”

(Courtesy: The New York Times)