U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits with Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah in Kabul on August 7, 2014, before a meeting about the ongoing recount of the presidential election vote between Abdullah and rival candidate Ashraf Ghani. (State Department )
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan presidential hopeful Abdullah Abdullah said Monday he would reject the results of an election audit expected to be completed later this week as talks between the two candidates on forming a unity government stalled.
The election audit represents a monthslong international effort to verify millions of ballots cast in the June runoff election, which pit Abdullah against Ashraf Gahni, The vote was marred by accusations of widespread fraud.
Abdullah, a former foreign minister, won the election’s first round in April but failed to secure enough votes to avoid a runoff. Preliminary tallies after the second round showed Ghani in the lead.
“We won’t accept a fraudulent government for a single day,” Abdullah told a news conference Monday. “We will defend every clean vote again and again.”
Late last month, Abdullah pulled his observers from the audit process, and the United Nations, which is overseeing the audit of disputed ballots, asked Ghani to do the same in the interest of fairness.
The prolonged election crisis has left the United States and its allies in the NATO-led coalition in limbo over their future role in the country after all foreign combat forces withdraw at the end of the year.
Both candidates have said they will sign bilateral security agreements that would outline the terms for maintaining foreign troops in the country into next year.
The U.S. has been pushing both candidates to accept the results of the audit and to form a national unity government in which the losing candidate would hold the position of chief executive. But the candidates have not been able to agree on what that role would entail.
The two sides met Sunday night but failed to make headway on the matter.
The impasse continues despite weekend calls President Barack Obama placed to both Abdullah and Ghani urging a peaceful resolution to the dispute.
The drawn-out election dispute also has raised concerns about civil unrest.
At the news conference, Abdullah appealed to his supporters to remain calm ahead of Tuesday’s anniversary of the death of his former militia commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was assassinated by al-Qaida two days before the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
A day before Obama’s phone calls, an Abdullah campaign spokesman, Mujib Rahman Rahimi, told The Associated Press there was the prospect of violence if the talks failed to reach an agreeable conclusion.
“If we agree and the terms of the agreement are providing an equal opportunity for both camps and defuses that tension, it might reduce the prospect of violence,” he said.
sleiman.jad@stripes.com Twitter: @JadASleiman
