Afghanistan’s rival presidential candidates was likely to reach a deal on how to share power late on Tuesday, according to Afghan and Western officials, potentially ending months of tension over the outcome of a run-off election held in June.
The struggle to find a successor to President Hamid Karzai, who has held power since the Islamist Taliban were ousted in 2001, has destabilised Afghanistan and paralysed its economy just as most foreign troops withdraw.
The rival candidates for the presidency have been negotiating for months on how to share power and the US secretary of state has twice flown in to try to broker a deal.
Abdullah Abdullah, a former anti-Taliban fighter who later served as foreign minister, says the election was rigged against him. His rival, former finance minister Ashraf Ghani, denies that.
“If no new issues arise ... it is possible and expected that it could be concluded at the meeting today,” Ghani’s spokesman, Faizullah Zaki, said of an elusive pact.
A deal between rival camps is widely seen as the best hope for peace after the fraud-marred vote dented confidence in the legitimacy of the process and fuelled ethnic and tribal rivalries between the teams.
Preliminary figures indicate that Ghani led the second round by more than a million votes, and the results of a UN supervised audit are also expected to show he is the winner, according to officials involved in the process.
Abdullah’s team, however, disputes the legitimacy of the process and is calling for political power to be shared. Ghani’s camp says everyone should accept the outcome once it is announced.
“The whole process will mean nothing if the results are not accepted,” Zaki said. “For the government of national unity to be shared, there must be a legitimately elected and accepted president.”