Afghanistan's landmark national elections will be delayed until September to give the UN more time to organize the violence-threatened vote, President Hamid Karzai said yesterday.
"We are ready to manage both elections -- for the parliament and presidency -- in September," Karzai told reporters at his palace in the Afghan capital.
Officials had warned repeatedly that the country's first post-Taliban elections, originally slated for June, would be delayed because of logistical problems and security fears.
So far, only 1.5 million of an estimated 10.5 million eligible voters have been registered for the elections, and it remains unclear how the UN intends to carry out a plan to register most of the others in May.
The Afghan government said on Saturday it will disarm 40,000 irregular Afghan militia soldiers and round up heavy weapons around the country in time for the vote to reduce the risk of voter intimidation.
But the world body, the US-led military coalition and the Afghan government are still working on plans to protect election workers from Taliban-led militants plaguing the south and east.
The top UN special representative in Afghanistan, Jean Arnault, welcomed the delay, saying it would allow time also for NATO to expand its peacekeeping operations beyond Kabul before the vote.
He also called on the Afghan government to guarantee a level playing field for challengers to Karzai and a rash of new political parties.
"Free and fair is not a given," Arnault said. "Many things that haven't happened in the past few years have to happen."
Meanwhile, a Taliban spokesman said the delay until September was "a humiliation and defeat" for Karzai and his American backers and claimed the elections would be fixed.
"They want to divert the attention of Afghans from the importance of jihad," or holy war, Hamid Agha said in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.
More than 200 people have died this year in violence around the country, including aid workers and government employees, as well as militants and foreign and Afghan soldiers.
Five foreign UN staffers helping prepare for the elections were attacked on March 14 with rocket-propelled grenades.
Taiwan’s exports soared to an all-time high of US$61.8 billion last month, surging 49.7 percent from a year earlier, as the global frenzy for artificial intelligence (AI) applications and new consumer electronics powered shipments of high-tech goods, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. It was the first time exports had exceeded the US$60 billion mark, fueled by the global boom in AI development that has significantly boosted Taiwanese companies across the international supply chain, Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) told a media briefing. “There is a consensus among major AI players that the upcycle is still in its early stage,”
‘SECRETS’: While saying China would not attack during his presidency, Donald Trump declined to say how Washington would respond if Beijing were to take military action US President Donald Trump said that China would not take military action against Taiwan while he is president, as the Chinese leaders “know the consequences.” Trump made the statement during an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes program that aired on Sunday, a few days after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea. “He [Xi] has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘we would never do anything while President Trump is president,’ because they know the consequences,” Trump said in the interview. However, he repeatedly declined to say exactly how Washington would respond in
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said yesterday that China using armed force against Taiwan could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, allowing the country to mobilize the Japanese armed forces under its security laws. Takaichi made the remarks during a parliamentary session yesterday while responding to a question about whether a "Taiwan contingency" involving a Chinese naval blockade would qualify as a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, according to a report by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun. "If warships are used and other armed actions are involved, I believe this could constitute a survival- threatening
WARFARE: All sectors of society should recognize, unite, and collectively resist and condemn Beijing’s cross-border suppression, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng said The number of Taiwanese detained because of legal affairs by Chinese authorities has tripled this year, as Beijing intensified its intimidation and division of Taiwanese by combining lawfare and cognitive warfare, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) made the statement in response to questions by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Puma Shen (沈柏洋) about the government’s response to counter Chinese public opinion warfare, lawfare and psychological warfare. Shen said he is also being investigated by China for promoting “Taiwanese independence.” He was referring to a report published on Tuesday last week by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency,
RSS