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| Afghanistan |
| US accepts Karzai as Afghan president despite poll fraud claims |
| 2009-09-29 |
| The White House has ended weeks of hesitation over how to respond to the Afghan election by accepting President Karzai as the winner despite evidence that up to 20 per cent of ballots cast may have been fraudulent. Abandoning its previous policy of not prejudging investigations of vote rigging, the Obama Administration has conceded that Mr Karzai will be President for another five years on the basis that even if he were forced into a second round of voting he would almost certainly win it. The decision will increase pressure on President Obama to justify further US troop deployments to Afghanistan to prop up a regime now regarded as systemically corrupt. The acceptance was conveyed by Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, in a meeting with her Afghan counterpart hours before Mr Obama received a formal request from General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, for up to 40,000 more troops. |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #3 okay, wapo seems to confirm this, but spins it differently. One, its not a US decision, but a consensus among the western powers. Two, they are still pushing for a runoff - but they think Karzai will win a run off anyway, and so they are moving ahead with plans to work with him. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2009-09-29 12:21 |
| #2 Obama didn't want Karzai asking any questions about ACORN. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2009-09-29 12:06 |
| #1 i dont see that the Times has sourced what, if i read it correctly, was a private message to the afghan govt. I will wait to see an official announcement. It could have been the Times got this from an Afghan govt source - such sources are known to exaggerate things sometimes. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2009-09-29 11:12 |