LONDON– Foreign Secretary David Miliband slammed Tuesday allegations of Western interference in Afghanistan's elections as "malign".Referring to a row which has strained ties between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Washington, he insisted British troops had helped secure elections tainted by allegations of fraud last year.
"It's very important we say clearly that any suggestion of Britain or any other country irregularly interfering in the election processes of Afghanistan is completely without foundation," he told lawmakers in the House of Commons."Our troops were there guaranteeing the safety of people seeking to go and vote and I'm sure it is a unified position across this house to have absolutely no truck with such malign suggestions -- especially about our troops, but actually about our whole country," he added.
His comments came after the United States and Karzai traded fresh recriminations Monday after failing to put a lid on a row over election fraud.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Karzai had told lawmakers that the United States was interfering with Afghan affairs and that the Taliban would become a legitimate resistance movement if it did not stop.
The paper said that in the private meeting, the Afghan president even suggested he could join the Taliban himself, if parliament did not support his efforts to take control of the country's election commission."The remarks are troubling and the substance of the remarks is simply not true," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, following the latest Karzai outbursts, just a week after President Barack Obama's surprise visit to Kabul.Karzai triggered the row last week with a speech blaming "foreigners" for widespread vote fraud in the presidential and provincial elections last year, and warning that the 126,000 NATO-led troops there risked being seen as "invaders".
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