Afghan leader defends election

KABUL — President Hamid Karzai acknowledged fraud Tuesday in the still-unresolved August presidential election but defended the vote as a “victory” for the Afghan people.

Results of the Aug. 20 balloting have stalled because of allegations of massive fraud, as a U.N.-backed panel investigates the charges before deciding whether Karzai won or must face his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, in a runoff.

Allegations that Karzai’s followers tried to rig the election have tarnished his image and raised doubts in the United States about the merits of the war even as the Obama administration weighs sending thousands more U.S. troops to fight Taliban insurgents.

In a bid to refurbish his image, Karzai appeared Tuesday on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America,” endorsing calls for more U.S. troops and accusing his critics of exaggerating the extent of election fraud.

“There were irregularities. There must’ve also been fraud committed, no doubt. But the election was good and fair and worthy of praise, not of scorn, which the election received from the international media. That makes me very unhappy. That rather makes me angry,” Karzai said.

“And we must not turn an election of the Afghan people — a victory of the Afghan people — into a nightmare for the Afghan people,” he said, adding that the balloting “as a whole was good and free and democratic” despite efforts by the Taliban to keep people from the polls.

Nevertheless, the fallout from the election has left Afghanistan in a deep political crisis, which has weakened the anti-Taliban coalition at a time when U.S. commanders acknowledge that the insurgents have seized the momentum in the eight-year war.

The crisis deepened Monday when one of the two Afghans on the U.N.-backed commission looking into fraud charges resigned, claiming the three foreigners on the panel were “making all the decisions on their own.”

Karzai said during his television interview that the resignation of the Afghan commissioner, Malawi Mustafa Barakzai, “has cast serious doubt on the functioning of the commission,” which is expected to decide on a runoff within the coming days.

The president said the commission “should do everything now to remove those suspicions and to remove any of those stigmas, and to prove that it is impartial and fair and not dictated from outside by foreign elements or governments.”

One of Abdullah’s deputy campaign managers accused Karzai’s election staff of engineering the resignation to discredit its findings in the fraud investigation.

“Barakzai’s resignation has direct connection to Karzai. It was Karzai’s idea,” Saleh Mohammad Registani said. “Karzai is trying to bring the work of the ECC into question.”

An official with Karzai’s campaign rejected the allegation, saying Barakzai was “totally independent.

Arasalah Jamal, the Karzai campaign’s liaison to the commission, said Barakzai quit because he was being cut out of the decision-making process, charge the U.N. mission here has denied.

If the commission orders a runoff, officials hope to schedule the second-round vote by the end of October before winter begins in this mountainous country. First snows traditionally fall in the high mountains in early November, closing transport routes through the passes and making it difficult for people to make it to the polls.

Winter ordinarily brings a decline in fighting too.

In some of the latest violence, the Interior Ministry said Afghan forces killed 15 insurgents in southern Kandahar province Monday. One policeman was also killed in the clash.

The ministry also reported that five Taliban fighters were killed Monday in Zabul province.

In the same province, a joint Afghan-international force killed several suspected militants during an incident Monday at a checkpoint. A NATO statement said bomb-making materials, grenades, rifles and ammunition were found in the militants’ vehicle.

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Associated Press Writers Rahim Faiez and Heidi Vogt contributed to this report.