Abdullah refuses to join cabinet if Karzai wins

Sat Oct 24, 2009

Afghan presidential hopeful Abdullah Abdullah has ruled out a possibility of joining Hamid Karzai's cabinet should the incumbent president win another term.

The former foreign minister who left Karzai's government some three-and-a-half years ago, told CNN in an interview taped for broadcast on Sunday that he was not interested in being part of Karzai's cabinet.

"(I have) absolutely no interest in such a scenario, while at the same time, for the interest of my country, if Mr. Karzai is elected through a transparent and credible process, I will be the first person to congratulate him," he said.

Initial results gave Karzai the win in the recent election, but a subsequent review by a UN-backed panel of election monitors threw out more than one million ballots cast in August's poll, mostly for Karzai, because of "clear and convincing evidence of fraud."

Abdullah and others have accused Karzai's government and Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) of involvement in massive vote-rigging in the August 20 presidential election.

"Unfortunately, the government was involved, IEC was involved. That's according to everybody," Abdullah said.

A run-off election has been set down for November 7th.

A 12-day campaign period for Afghanistan's run-off officially began Saturday morning.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/109464.html.