Former Afghan foreign minister registers for presidential election
Iran Press TV
Tue Oct 1, 2013 2:55PM GMT
Prominent Afghan opposition leader and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah will run for president in next year's election.
The opposition figure said he has registered his candidacy on Tuesday for the April 2014 election.
This comes as President Hamid Karzai is not allowed to run for a third five-year term under Afghan law.
In 2009, Abdullah dropped out ahead of a runoff vote following allegations of massive fraud in the first round.
The 53-year-old politician served as Karzai's foreign minister from 2001 to 2006.
He was then sacked and became a leading opposition figure.
The Afghan presidential election comes as US-led combat troops are expected to withdraw by December 2014 and the Taliban seek a return to government.
The upcoming vote is scheduled to be held months before the expected withdrawal of the US-led foreign forces from the war-ravaged country.
The election comes at a time when the country is grappling with growing wave of violence and militancy.
The last presidential election took place in 2009.
Karzai has repeatedly warned against the US meddling in Afghanistan's upcoming presidential election, stressing that the presence of foreigners in the country’s election watchdog is against the country's sovereignty. Two of the five members of the Electoral Complaints Commission in Afghanistan are non-Afghan.
"The presence of foreigners in the Electoral Complaints Commission is against the sovereignty of Afghanistan," Karzai said in October 2012, adding that "Foreign observers can still come to monitor the transparency or non-transparency of the election, but their interference in the election process is against Afghanistan's sovereignty."
Some analysts are calling the landmark election the litmus test for democracy after 12 years of a US-led occupation.
JR/PR
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