London, October 23: A German diplomat, Wolfgang Weisbrod-Weber, has been named to temporarily serve as a deputy to UN’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Kai Eide.
Eide’s former deputy, US diplomat Peter Galbraith, was fired after he openly disagreed with how the UN handled the first round of Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential election.
Weisbrod-Weber is presently the director of the Asia and Middle East division in the department of peacekeeping at the UN headquarters in New York.
Afghanistan will hold a run-off on November 7, after President Hamid Karzai failed to collect 50 percent of the votes.
He will face the next largest vote-getter, Afghanistan’s former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.
—–Agencies