Karzai moves to reform electoral system

President Hamid Karzai has taken key steps to reform Afghanistan's electoral system, naming a respected former judge to head an organising body and ending his bid to exclude international representatives from a fraud-monitoring group.

The moves meet long-standing international demands that the electoral process be cleaned up after massive fraud in last year's presidential balloting.

Afghanistan risked losing both funds for an upcoming parliamentary vote and broader international support without meeting those demands.

Disagreements about how to handle the fraud-marred presidential vote nearly derailed the US-Afghan partnership, even as President Barack Obama was ordering thousands more US troops to try to turn back the Taliban.

Many international diplomats and officials have been worried that parliamentary elections scheduled for September could prove similarly disastrous.

Mr Karzai also named three Afghans and two United Nations representatives to the separate UN-backed watchdog group that uncovered the fraud in last year's election. The UN said it was now recommending that donor nations release funds set aside for the parliamentary vote.

The US embassy welcomed the changes, saying it hoped they would help deliver "transparent, fair and credible parliamentary election to the Afghan people".

Last February Mr Karzai issued a presidential decree excluding foreigners from the watchdog. But the lower house of parliament threw out the decree.

Presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said Mr Karzai had agreed to include two UN representatives to address the concerns of the international community.

Mr Omar said the watchdog would not be able to make decisions without the agreement of at least one of the international representatives - a South African and an Iraqi nominated by the United Nations.

The chief of the UN mission, Staffan de Mistura, said that with the changes, he believed the September 18 parliamentary elections would be "more credible, more transparent" than the presidential election last year.

But it is unclear if Mr Karzai's most recent appointments will result in a more transparent vote, or simply be the latest attempt to paper over an entrenched system of cronyism and vote-trading by giving the appearance of a democratic election.

Mr Karzai has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing on the part of the officials he appointed to run last year's election, at times even accusing the UN and international advisers of being behind the fraud - comments that drew sharp rebukes from the White House and the United Nations.

The new chairman of the Independent Election Commission is Fazel Ahmed Manawi, an Islamic scholar who joined the opposition Northern Alliance after Kabul fell to the Taliban in 1996 and took part in talks to form a new government after the US-led invasion drove them from power in 2001.

As an electoral commissioner last year, he was not considered as closely tied to Mr Karzai as his predecessor, Azizullah Lodin.

Mr Lodin said last year that he saw no conflict of interest in briefing the president on discussions between the commission and the UN-backed watchdog body, the Electoral Complaints Commission, as it was investigating fraud allegations.

The complaints body threw out nearly a third of Mr Karzai's votes, forcing him into a run-off with his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

Mr Karzai was proclaimed the winner after Mr Abdullah dropped out of the run-off, saying he was not convinced the second ballot would be fairer than the first.

Mr Lodin said this month that he did not want a second term as head of the commission. Another top election official accused of ignoring fraud submitted his resignation at the same time.

A representative of Mr Abdullah, Fazel Sancharaki, called Mr Manawi's appointment "a positive step", saying he had a reputation for impartiality when he served as a supreme court judge and for fair judgments as an election commissioner.