British diplomat Paddy Ashdown has announced he will not take on a UN post as a so-called "super envoy" to Afghanistan after Afghan President Hamid Karzai suddenly revoked his support.
Ashdown, who was Bosnia-Herzegovina's postwar international administrator, said that he accepted the job this month after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked him to be overall coordinator of international aid, government and political efforts in Afghanistan.
Ashdown, speaking on Sunday on British Broadcasting Corp television, said he initially had the blessing of Karzai, with whom he met last month in Kuwait to discuss the new role.
But Karzai changed his mind and in the past few days, raised objections during meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Times of London reported. Brown's office declined to comment on the private meeting.
An EU diplomat also said Karzai had conveyed reservations about Ashdown to Brussels last week.
"I wouldn't have dreamed of undertaking the job unless [Karzai] agreed that I should do so. After I saw the UN secretary-general, we shook hands albeit over a telephone," Ashdown said on BBC television.
"Now something's happened that's changed his view. I think that's far more to do with Afghan internal politics than it has with the international community," Ashdown said.
A US official familiar with the Ashdown nomination process said the US had consulted with the Afghan government on Ashdown's nomination.
"We only sent Ashdown's name to the UN for official consideration after Karzai had given his blessing to both the person and the mandate," the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Foreign ministers representing NATO countries have discussed combining the roles of the current civilian representatives of the UN, NATO and the EU in Kabul into a single role. British officials had said Ashdown would be ideal because he had respect in world capitals.
The Afghan role would have been more limited than Ashdown's work in Bosnia, where he had sweeping powers. But he might have been too strong a figure for Karzai, whose government is widely seen as weak.
Ashdown said he never sought the kinds of powers he had in Bosnia when negotiating the mandate for the Afghan job.
"If they'd been offered, I would have rejected them," he said. "The government of Afghanistan is a sovereign government, it's a proud nation, President Karzai is its president."
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband expressed regret that Ashdown would not be taking over the expanded international role.
"The UK believes he was well-suited to this important role and would have done an excellent job," Miliband said. "It is now imperative that the UN and the government of Afghanistan work together as quickly as possible to agree a suitable candidate to take on this key role."
Ashdown, once a leader of Britain's opposition Liberal Democrats and a former Royal Marine, was top international administrator in Bosnia from 2002 to 2005.
Ashdown said US officials approached him about the job in October.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS