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.
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