Election result would be known by August 25: Faizi

KABUL (Pajhwok): Presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi has said the audit and result of the second round of presidential election would be known by August 25.

“There will be no extension because Afghanistan is suffering,” he told Reuters news agency in a report published on Friday.

The report said Western diplomats feared the UN-monitored audit of the June election could take months to complete, given the snail’s pace of progress so far.
It is becoming an increasingly pressing and awkward question for NATO insurgency ups attacks on civilian and military targets.
“They (NATO) don’t want him (Karzai) to spoil the party,” said one diplomat, who asked not to be identified.
“We really hope that the election is wrapped up by then (the NATO summit) … it will be a huge concern for us and the international community if this drags on,” said Tahir Zaheer, a spokesman for Ghani.
“It is for the next president to participate, but if we are invited and the election result is still unclear, we will not go because it will be embarrassing.”
Abdullah favours sending both candidates, or their envoys, to represent Afghanistan at the summit. “Karzai hasn’t signed the BSA or the SOFA, plus the election’s fate is in the air, so there is no point in him going. This is a matter of the country’s future,” said Mahmoud Saikal, a top aide to Abdullah.
Both Abdullah and Ghani say they will sign the bilateral security agreement (BSA) and the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to allow some US and NATO forces to stay in Afghanistan beyond an end-of-year deadline for foreign troops to leave.
“It is crucial that the next Afghan president signs the required security agreements for our post-2014 presence without delay,” a NATO official in Brussels said.
“Time is of the essence, and as the secretary-general has made clear, without legal agreements there can be no NATO-led training mission after 2014.”
Saturday’s swearing-in ceremony was to have marked the first democratic transition of power in the country’s history. The inauguration had been scheduled five weeks before the NATO summit,
an occasion where member states were due to trumpet the Western alliance’s achievements in Afghanistan 13 years after the Taliban were driven from power.
A few weeks after the NATO summit, the new Afghan leader had also been due to take his position on the international stage in New York at a sitting of the United Nations General Assembly.
The Karzai administration said a new leader would be sworn in by the end of August.

The NATO official said no decision had yet been taken on who would be on the invitation list to the summit.
“It is essential to let the audit process run its course and it is therefore premature at this stage to take any decision with regard to individual invitations to the summit.”
Western diplomats in Kabul say one option would be to send one of either the foreign, defence or interior ministers to attend both the NATO summit and UN General Assembly.
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