KABUL, Afghanistan – The United Nations is quietly pushing a proposal aimed at healing a rupture between President Hamid Karzai and the opposition-dominated National Assembly that threatens to ignite a full-blown constitutional crisis, two international officials said.
The plan, however, risks inflaming the feud and triggering charges of foreign interference with the country’s electoral commission, which is supposed to be independent but whose credibility was battered by two successive fraud-marred national elections.
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The U.N. is pressing the commission to overturn for alleged fraud the results of 17 of last year’s 249 races for the parliament’s lower house, the officials said on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The number is far fewer than the 62 contests that Karzai wanted reversed, but stops short of granting opposition lawmakers’ calls for no changes at all.
“Once the IEC (Independent Election Commission) makes its announcement, the entire international community will be in lockstep supporting the IEC decision,” one official said.
The United States will support whatever the IEC rules, but isn’t backing the U.N. plan, said a senior U.S. official who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The results of the elections, held last Aug. 18, have been a point of contention since they were announced in December. Karzai opponents did well, defeating several of the president’s allies, but Karzai supporters quickly went on the attack, accusing the opposition of fraud.
In December, Karzai ordered the creation of a tribunal to sort out the fraud allegations, a step the IEC, opposition lawmakers and the international community dismissed as illegal and an attempt by Karzai to insert more of his backers into the lower house.
During the impasse, the National Assembly has refused to pass legislation or approve Cabinet appointments, and threatened to impeach Karzai, who has been forced to rule by decree.
In June, Karzai dissolved the tribunal.
The U.N. plan is intended to resolve the crisis for fear it will add to instability as the U.S. withdraws troops.
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