AFP

Afghanistan may have to send only its defence minister to a Nato summit that will decide on future support because of an impasse over the presidential election, officials said yesterday.

The deadlock over the fraud-tainted election has left Afghanistan in paralysis as two rival candidates battle to succeed outgoing President Hamid Karzai, who has declined to attend the Nato gathering.

Nato’s combat mission against the Taliban insurgents ends this year and the summit, starting in Britain on Thursday, is set to decide on a follow-up support mission widely seen as crucial to maintaining fragile nationwide stability.

But unless a president is chosen soon, Afghan Defence Minister Bismillah Mohamadi will attend the meeting alongside US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

“We are preparing to send the minister of defence to the Nato summit to represent the Afghan government,” said Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi.

“If the president-elect is declared just before the summit and we do not have time for the inauguration, then the president-elect will be given an authorisation letter by the current president to attend.”

The summit is meant to confirm Nato’s continued funding for the Afghan army and police, who are struggling to hold back the Taliban with declining assistance from US-led forces.

Nato members have repeatedly stressed that a new president should attend the summit to prove that the country is becoming a functioning state after receiving billions of dollars in military and civilian aid.

Rival presidential candidates Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah both claim victory in the June 14 election, which has been engulfed in allegations of fraud.

The latest inauguration deadline of September 2 was abandoned as a UN-supervised audit of all 8mn votes has fallen behind schedule.

Nato officials in Kabul say it is up to the government as to who travels to Newport, Wales for the summit, which will also discuss the Ukraine crisis.

The disputed Afghan election has raised fears of a return to the ethnic divisions of the 1990s civil war when fighting between warlords allowed the Taliban to seize power.

Ethnic conflict is a risk as Abdullah draws his support from Tajiks and other northern Afghan groups, while Ghani is backed by Pashtun tribes of the south and east.

Tensions peaked after Abdullah rejected preliminary results that put Ghani ahead, and US Secretary of State John Kerry flew into Kabul twice to broker a deal between the feuding candidates.

Under the deal, both candidates agreed to the audit of all 8mn votes to clean out fraudulent ballots, and to form national unity government together whoever emerged as winner.

But Abdullah pulled out of the audit last Wednesday and the two sides have been wrangling over the unity government, which would create a new “chief executive officer” role under the president.

“There are conflicting ideas,” said Tahir Zaheer, Ghani’s campaign spokesman, told AFP.  “Our rivals demand the CEO should be the head of the cabinet, but that is against the Afghan constitution and outside the law.”

Some of Abdullah’s supporters have urged him to form a “parallel government”, while officials deny reports that some current ministers planned to set up a “interim administration” to take power.

Such moves would seriously imperil Nato support and the other aid on which the fragile economy relies, as well as ending hopes that democracy would be a legacy of the costly US-led military and civilian intervention since 2001.

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