Karzai offers rival top Cabinet post in effort to avoid election defeat

www.timesonline.co.uk
One of the three main contenders in Afghanistan’s presidential election admitted yesterday that he had been offered a power-sharing deal by President Karzai in an apparent attempt to sideline the other leading candidate and avoid a second-round vote.

Ashraf Ghani, a former academic and World Bank executive, told The Times that a “weakening” Mr Karzai had attempted to persuade him to abandon his campaign in exchange for the position of prime minister in a new Karzai administration.

Mr Ghani, who was Finance Minister in Mr Karzai’s first Cabinet, said that he was “listening” to the approaches from Mr Karzai’s intermediaries but was not giving up his campaign for the election on August 20. “An offer was made. It was for a position as ‘chief executive’ [in the Cabinet],” he said. “The details were not worked out. I am not discontinuing my election campaign.”

The proposed deal could seriously undermine the campaign of the other major contender in the election, Abdullah Abdullah, who is widely regarded as the main threat to Mr Karzai’s continued grip on power.

Wahid Omer, a spokesman for Mr Karzai, confirmed that there had been talks with Mr Ghani, but denied there had been an offer of a specific post. “Our talks are going towards Ashraf Ghani joining with Karzai. Ghani’s team has also contacted us ... It’s not just us contacting them.”

The alleged offer appears to suggest that the President is no longer confident of winning an outright majority in the first round, and may even fear losing in a second round run-off with Dr Abdullah.

It has also prompted speculation that the international community supports the idea as a way of stunting Mr Karzai’s power and bringing on board a skilled technocrat, while retaining an administration led by ethnic Pashtuns. Both Mr Karzai and Mr Ghani are Pashtuns, the country’s majority ethnicity and the one from which the Taleban draws it strength.

Dr Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister in Mr Karzai’s first Government, is of mixed Tajik and Pashtun ethnicity but has longstanding links to the Tajik north, which is his main support base. Some diplomats fear that if he won it would further exacerbate the sense of alienation among the Pashtun southern tribes and fuel greater violence.

Sources close to the Ghani campaign denied that the United States was driving the deal, but confirmed that US diplomats had offered assurances that the Karzai offer was “genuine”.

Dr Abdullah, however, said he doubted that the US supported the proposed power-sharing arrangement. “Afghanistan has not benefited from these deals,” he told The Times. “A dream team? Or a nightmare team? I don’t know. What I do know is that people want change.”

Public mood is notoriously difficult to judge in Afghanistan, but opinion polls do suggest a narrowing lead for the President and an increasing likelihood of a second round.

Mr Ghani said that President Karzai’s strategy of brokering deals with regional strongmen had failed. “Karzai’s support is weakening in every place you look,” he said.

“His strategy is to seek out ethnic entrepreneurs on the assumption that they have vote banks that can deliver blocs of votes. They can’t. I am peeling away a major portion of his support. Abdullah is succeeding in peeling another major portion of it.”