The US Ambassador to Kabul Dr Zalmay Khalilzad on Thursday commended Pakistan for having played a positive role with regard to the registration of the Afghans who are still refugees in Pakistan.
"Over 700,000 Afghans have registered in Pakistan to participate in electing the leader," he said in response to a question in the live telephonic conference from Kabul with newsmen in the conference rooms of Foreign Press Centers (FPC) in Washington and New York.
He was asked to comment on the role of Pakistan in the election process, especially in the light of Dostum's statement alleging Pakistan of meddling in the affairs of Afghan election process.
Khalilzad said, when he was in New York during the General Assembly a few weeks ago, President Bush invited President Musharraf and President Karzai to a trilateral meeting and need was impressed of the importance of a successful election in Afghanistan.
On the occasion, he said, he urged Pakistan to do all that it could to make sure that Pakistani territory is not used to increase or create security problems for Afghanistan during this critical period.
"The President of Pakistan committed himself to do everything he could to be helpful in this process, and we have seen some indications that Pakistan is trying harder to be helpful, and that's obviously welcomed."
At the outset, Dr Zalmay Khalilzad said "we are at the end of the campaign season for the presidency here in Afghanistan. The campaign ended at 7:00 am on Thursday morning, and the Afghans are poised to vote on Saturday."
He said, this was a historic opportunity for the people of Afghanistan. "Never before have they had the opportunity, both men and women, to vote for the president of Afghanistan, the leader of Afghanistan, in a secret ballot in a free and fair election, given the conditions in Afghanistan."
He said, there are still possibilities of some people dropping out of the race in the coming 24 hours, though the likelihood of any coalition emerging of candidates, "as has been speculated about in the course of the last couple of days, has disappeared."
Khalilzad said the security is still the key thing.
"Because of the efforts of the Afghan National Army and police working together with the force of the coalition and ISAF, we have been able to limit the efforts that the opposition has been making to prevent the election from taking place, and they have failed in that effort."
He stated that "the election will take place on Saturday."
Those opposed to election process, he said, were still trying to find ways and means of disturbing or disrupting the election. A couple of hours ago, he disclosed, "we got a call from ISAF that a couple of missiles were launched near Kabul. We don't know what damage it might have done, but it was near one of the military facilities that we have near Kabul, Camp Wilhouse."
Comments
Comments are closed.