29 January 2009: Canadian Press
By STEVE RENNIE, THE CANADIAN PRESS
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A top cabinet minister in Afghanistan's government ruled out a run for the country's presidency Thursday as he played down concerns about the election being delayed by several months.
Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar, generally regarded as a strong performer with an unblemished reputation in President Hamid Karzai's government, said he had "never" thought of challenging for the country's top job.
"I will fully support President Karzai in his nomination. He's the great leader we have," Atmar said.
"He has had (a) difficult time, no doubt about it. A leader to navigate the Afghan broken ship was never easy. Afghan people will trust him again, and I will, as part of his team, fully support him."
The Afghan constitution requires that a presidential vote be held this spring, but allows for delays in the event of security concerns. Afghanistan's election commission said Thursday the election will be pushed back to Aug. 20 to give coalition forces more time to bolster security.
The delay comes one day after the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies warned Afghanistan is entering its most critical period since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
In its annual report on the capabilities of national militaries around the globe, the British think tank warned that Karzai's government holds little sway beyond Kabul's city limits.
"Against this background there is a risk that it will not be possible to hold elections; or voter turnout may be below the minimum necessary for the ballot to be valid," the group's director-general, John Chipman, said in a statement.
Some local Afghan villagers, particularly in the volatile south, derisively refer to Karzai as "the mayor of Kabul."
U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to deploy tens of thousands of American troops to Afghanistan over the next 18 months. Military commanders here expect the extra troops will mean more clashes with Taliban insurgents bent on disrupting the August ballot.
The constitution allows elections to be postponed if a lack of security or logistical preparations would deny Afghans a peaceful vote, Atmar said. He also dismissed the idea of an interim government when Karzai's term officially expires in May.
"It will be very bizarre for me to try to put together a government for another two months or three months. The Afghan people just need free and fair elections, and they know what is practical," Atmar said.
"A delay of a couple of weeks or months would not be a big issue for them, as long as they are able to participate in the new elections and to exercise their right."
The head of the Independent Election Commission, Azizullah Lodin, said legislators will make special provisions to avoid a power vacuum when Karzai's term technically ends.
The United States strongly supported Karzai for the better part of the last seven years. But allegations of corruption have eroded support for Karzai's government at home and abroad. With Obama in the White House, that support could collapse altogether.
The new U.S. president has struck a more critical tone on Karzai's regime than did his predecessor, George W. Bush. Obama criticized the
Afghan president on CNN last summer, saying his government "had not gotten out of the bunker and helped organize Afghanistan and (the) government, the judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence."
In her written Senate testimony for her nomination as U.S. secretary of state earlier this month, Obama's top diplomat and former leadership
rival, Hillary Clinton, called Afghanistan a "narco state" whose government was "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption."
So far, none of the rumoured presidential candidates pose a serious threat to unseat Karzai. Atmar would have been a credible challenger.
He is from the same Pashtun ethnic group from which the Taliban draw most of their fighters. Pashtuns are also a dominant tribe in Kandahar province, where some 2,750 Canadian soldiers are waging a bloody campaign against an emboldened Taliban insurgency.
Atmar oversaw rural development programs and helped rebuild Afghanistan's decimated school system in his previous posts before Karzai appointed him interior minister in last October's cabinet shuffle.
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