London, October 25: UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other world leaders had pressured the Afghan incumbent president into accepting a run-off vote, Hamid Karzai has revealed.
In an interview with CNN that will be broadcast in full on Sunday, Karzai noted that “a lot of leaders” had called and persuaded him into accepting the run-off.
“There was this friendly effort by some governments to ask me to accept the result of the ECC (Electoral Complaints Commission),” said Karzai.
Brown, Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari were among the leaders Karzai mentioned. However, the Afghan president did not name the White House.
Afghanistan’s first round of presidential election, which was held on August 20, was marred after the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) found massive fraud.
Up to 1.3 million votes were discarded as fraudulent, around one million of them for Karzai, whose share fell below the 50 percent needed for victory as a result.
The fate of the next Afghan leader would be clear when Karzai competes with his main rival Abdullah Abdullah on November 7 in the second round.
Moreover, Karzai counted other reasons for accepting the second round, including the country’s current situation.
“It was recognizing that Afghanistan had gone through so many years of difficulty, so many years of internal strife, and I felt that Afghanistan was entering that period again,” Karzai said.
“I felt as if Afghans were pitted one against the other, and for that reason, and for the reason of safety and security of the Afghan people and… cementing democratic traditions in Afghanistan, I went to agree to a second round, which I believe is good for Afghanistan.”
—–Agencies