Obama agenda: Karzai wants run-off
Posted: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 9:19 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
White House, Security, Barack Obama
“Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai conceded Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election, and agreed to hold a run-off election with his top challenger on Nov. 7,” the New York Times reports. “Flanked at a news conference in Kabul by Senator John Kerry, the head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai said he would accepting the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly a third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.”
The Washington Post: “Karzai's acceptance of another round of voting, after weeks of resistance, should enable the Obama administration to proceed with a high-level review of its faltering Afghanistan war strategy, a process that has been hamstrung by the delay in determining who its Afghan government partner will be. The White House has been under increasing congressional and public pressure to make a decision on whether to send tens of thousands of more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, as requested by the top American commander there.”
Before his fundraising day in New York City, President Obama meets with Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki at the White House.
"Vice President Joe Biden is traveling to Central Europe to reassure leaders who are nervous that the Obama administration's courting of Russia means a reduced commitment to their security. Biden's trip Tuesday comes in the aftermath of the administration's decision to rework a missile defense plan devised by the Bush administration and opposed by Russia. Leaders in Poland and the Czech Republic, where the system was to have been based, had hoped it would offer a permanent U.S. presence and deterrence against potential Russian bullying."
