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Karzai speaking at a press conference announcing the postponement of elections
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KABUL,
March 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - President Hamid
Karzai announced Sunday, March 28, that Afghanistan's landmark
post-Taliban elections will be delayed until September 2004, three
months later than originally scheduled.
“The
joint election commission with UNAMA (United Nations Assistance
Mission in Afghanistan) came to me and informed me that they can hold
presidential and parliamentary elections both at the same time,”
Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Karzai as telling a press
conference.
“And
that will happen late Sunbola or early Mizan,” he said naming the
portion of the Afghan calendar which corresponds to mid to late
September.
Under
the Bonn peace accords drawn up in late 2001 following the ousting of
the Taliban regime, war-ravaged Afghanistan was due to hold democratic
elections in June 2004.
However,
the election process has been hampered by low voter registration,
threats by Taliban remnants, and security problems that have driven
many international aid workers out of large parts of Afghanistan's
south and southeast.
Security
in the country remains uncertain, with some 6,000 NATO-led
peacekeepers in Kabul and the northern city of Kunduz, while U.S.
troops are conducting a
major operation in the Pakistan border region to
root out Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters.
Karzai
acknowledged that Afghanistan had experienced serious factional
fighting in the past week, during which Aviation Minister Mirwais
Sadiq was
killed in the western city of Herat.
But
he said electoral officials had assured him that progress was being
made in organizing the polls.
While
he welcomed the announcement, UNAMA head and U.N. special envoy Jean
Arnauld said “the right conditions are not yet there” to hold
elections.
“In
order to have a proper election in September, clearly many things that
haven't happened in the past couple of years must now happen in a
very, very short period of time," he told a press briefing in
Kabul.
These
included disarming many of the more than 100,000 militiamen around the
country to improve security and strengthening political freedoms, he
added.
News
of the elections came as Afghanistan prepared to ask the international
community for further pledges of aid to rebuild the country and
prevent it becoming a failed state at a conference to take place in
Berlin on March 31 and April 1.
Militias
Reduced
Meanwhile,
Afghanistan's administration has formally announced plans to reduce
its armed militia forces by 40 percent and collect all heavy weapons
from around the country before elections.
“The
Security Council decided to reduce the number of its military units by
40 percent,” Deputy Defense Minister General Abdul Rahim Wardak said
Saturday, March 27.
Speaking
at a ceremony in Kabul to mark the last phase in the collection of
heavy weapons from the capital, Wardak said the U.N.-supported
Disarmament, Demobilization and Re-integration (DDR) program would
complete the twin tasks before the general elections.
Some
of the disarmed militiamen will be integrated into the new national
army while others will be re-trained and helped to find employment.
Disarmament
is widely considered necessary before free and fair polls can be held.
Eradicating
private militias is one of the priorities for Karzai as he attempts to
extend the authority of his government to the provinces which have
been troubled by factional fighting and rights abuses by commanders.
