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World powers greet Karzai on re-election

* US president calls for a ‘new chapter’ of better governance

KABUL: The United States and UN chief Ban Ki-moon led world powers in congratulating Hamid Karzai on Monday, after the Afghan president was re-elected following the cancellation of a run-off.

The war-stricken country’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) cancelled the run-off election this weekend after Karzai’s only challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out of the contest. “We congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election and look forward to working with him,” the US embassy in Kabul said in a statement.

It said US looked forward to cooperating with “his new administration, the Afghan people and our partners in the international community to support Afghanistan’s progress towards institutional reforms, security and prosperity”. Ban Ki-moon – who met Karzai and Abdullah in a push to end the political chaos – welcomed the decision to cancel the run-off and was the first world figure to congratulate the president.

Congratulate: US President Barack Obama said he spoke to Afghan President Hamid Karzai to congratulate him on his second-term election victory and to call for a “new chapter” of better governance after the fraud-ridden election. Obama said he noted to Karzai that the election had been “messy” but that he was “pleased to say the final outcome was determined by Afghan law”. President Obama spoke about the Afghan election at the end of a meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown telephoned Karzai to urge him to plot a course of national unity. “They discussed the importance of the president moving quickly to set out a unifying programme for the future of Afghanistan,” said a spokesman for Brown. NATO powers France and Germany urged Karzai to work with his defeated rival to end the political strife. “We expect the Afghan president to work hard to reunite the two camps... and try to be the president of all Afghans,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters in Paris.

His French counterpart Bernard Kouchner said that European governments should work closely with the US to persuade Karzai to come to an arrangement with Abdullah. Afghanistan’s neighbour Pakistan offered its “heartiest felicitations” to Karzai. “I have great pleasure to extend to you my heartiest felicitations on your re-election,” President Asif Zardari said in a message. Russia’s foreign ministry said the election had “opened the way for the formation of the new national government, whose great task is the key problem of stabilising conditions in the country. afp

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