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Afghan leader to allow foreign election monitors

13 March 2010 17:54 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Afghanistan’s president backed off from a much-criticized move to control the previously independent monitoring body for upcoming parliamentary elections, offering Saturday to allow two foreigners on the commission, APA reports quoting â€œAssociated Pressâ€.

Democracy advocates welcomed President Hamid Karzai’s decision but said more needs to be to avoid a repeat of last year’s presidential vote, which was marred by widespread ballot-stuffing accusations.

Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar, who announced the decision Saturday, denied it was made under diplomatic pressure but said the president made the concession because the country is in a "transitional phase" to democracy.

The controversy over last year’s elections threatened the legitimacy of the Afghan government just as NATO made a workable administration the centerpiece of a new counterinsurgency strategy to salvage the 8-year-old war against the Taliban. Foreign nations with troops in the country are pushing for cleaner parliamentary polls to mitigate the damage.

Last month, Karzai signed a decree allowing him to appoint all five members of the Electoral Complaints Commission in consultation with parliamentary leaders and the head of the Supreme Court. The watchdog body previously had three U.N. appointees.

Karzai’s decree was criticized as a bid to control the body ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

Last year, the complaints commission stripped Karzai of nearly one-third of his votes, forcing a potential runoff. Karzai was later declared the victor when his remaining challenger dropped out of the race.

On Saturday, Omar told reporters the president is now willing to accept adjustments to the election watchdog.

"The Afghan government has shown its readiness to accept two non-Afghans on the Electoral Complaints Commission and this has been announced to the United Nations," Omar said.

However, Omar said the monitoring body â€” which is separate from the elections commission that administers the polls â€” would still be controlled by Afghans, who would hold a majority vote. It was not immediately clear whether Karzai or the U.N. would appoint the foreign commission members.

The head of the advocacy group Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan, Jandad Spinghar, said the nationalities of the monitoring commission matter less than how independently the watchdog works in the next elections.

"It’s good news ... but there are still concerns," Spinghar said. "If there is no legal guarantee for the independence of the ECC, there will be problems."

U.N. spokeswoman Susan Manuel in Kabul could not confirm the world body had received Karzai’s offer. Former U.N. chief of mission Kai Eide said in his farewell briefing Thursday that he met with Karzai that morning and had made "some progress" on the makeup of the election complaints commission.

The new United Nations chief of mission, Staffan de Mistura, arrived in Kabul on Saturday. "We’re sure he will be taking this up with the president," Manuel said.

De Mistura did not comment on the election commission issue when he spoke briefly to reporters at Kabul’s airport. He said that whatever the U.N. does in the country, "it will be done remembering that it should be Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and in total respect of their own sovereignty."

The U.S. is sending 30,000 more troops to the international coalition in Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents who have regained ground since a U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled their hard-line Islamist regime.

Government corruption is often cited as a major reason why many Afghans have turned to the Taliban.

The insurgents have ratcheted up violence across the country in recent years. On Saturday, a remote-controlled roadside bomb killed six Afghan civilians traveling in Tirin Kot, capital of central Uruzgan province, according to Zemarai Bashary, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior.