Kerry Visits Afghanistan to Urge Election Deal

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Thursday in a bid to rescue the political agreement he negotiated almost four weeks ago.

The Obama administration is pressing the Afghans to inaugurate a president before NATO nations hold a summit meeting in Wales in early September.

“We would like to see the president inaugurated and arriving at NATO as part of a government of national unity,” said a senior State Department official who is travelling with Mr. Kerry.

But that will require the two sides to stop squabbling so that the vote auditing process can be accelerated and power-sharing issues can be resolved.

A delay in picking a president could have enormous ramifications for Afghanistan’s security.

Hamid Karzai, who has remained Afghanistan’s president while the election results are being sorted out, has left to his successor the decision of whether to sign two security accords that would provide the legal basis for American and other NATO troops to remain after 2014.

Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the two political opponents who squared off in the June runoff, have each made it clear that they would sign the accords.

But because of the infighting over the ballot recount procedures, only 2,400 of the nation’s 23,000 ballot boxes have so far been audited.

Mr. Kerry plans to meet with Mr. Ghani, Mr. Abdullah and with Jan Kubis, the senior United Nations official here, on Thursday night. Mr. Kerry is also scheduled to see Mr. Karzai and to hold follow-up meetings before leaving on Friday for a conference of Asian nations in Myanmar.

During his previous visit to Kabul last month, Mr. Kerry brokered a deal that called for all eight million votes cast in the runoff election to be audited under international supervision.

The agreement also outlined a power-sharing arrangement in which the loser of the election, or a representative of his choice, would serve under the president as the government’s chief executive officer.

After a loya jirga, or grand council, is held in two years, the chief executive post would be elevated to that of an executive prime minister, under the plan. Posts in the major security and economic ministries would be shared equally between the two sides.

The one-page agreement has not yet been signed by the candidates or formally made public. And since the agreement was announced, the understanding has begun to fray. Aides to Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah have argued about the procedures for invalidating fraudulent ballots.

With the outcome of the election still uncertain, and each side’s political patronage networks at stake, the candidates have been reluctant to complete the power-sharing arrangements.

The senior State Department official asserted that the two sides had recently begun to work more collaboratively. But he acknowledged that Mr. Kerry would press them to reaffirm their commitment to the agreement with an eye to meeting the NATO summit deadline.

“What is most important right now is not whether it is signed or not,” the official said of the agreement, “but really whether both sides demonstrate that they continue to be committed to it, that they are not walking back from the commitments.” “We need to continue to help to accelerate it,” he added.

Mr. Kerry’s visit follows the shooting death on Tuesday of Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene during a so-called insider attack by an Afghan soldier at Afghanistan’s premier military academy near Kabul. Fifteen people were shot before Afghan troops rushed in and killed the soldier, who was identified on Wednesday as Rafiullah, from the Jani Khel district of Paktika Province.