Top UN official in Afghanistan wants to leave when 2-year contract expires in March

Top UN official in Afghanistan to leave in March

KABUL — The top U.N. official in Afghanistan said Friday he will not renew his contract when it expires in March after a two-year tenure marred by controversy over his handling of the country’s fraud-marred presidential election and a deadly attack on U.N. workers.

Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat, said he is not stepping down but has asked U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to start searching for a replacement.

“I’m not resigning,” Eide told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “It’s a question of telling New York that I’m not renewing my contract.”

Eide’s tenure was tarnished by allegations from his American deputy, Peter Galbraith, that he was not bullish enough in curbing fraud in the August presidential election, which eventually awarded a second term to Hamid Karzai. Eide denied the charge and said controversy over the election was not linked to his decision not to renew his contract.

“The election controversy was between Peter Galbraith and the rest of the international community,” he said.

“Kai Eide is sticking to the timetable that he outlined when he took the job in March 2008,” Dan McNorton, a U.N. spokesman in Kabul said.

Eide leads the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which coordinates the U.N. operation in the country. The U.N. mission is still reeling from a pre-dawn assault Oct. 28 on a guesthouse in Kabul where dozens of U.N. staffers lived. Gunmen wearing suicide vests stormed inside. Five U.N. workers were among those killed.

In response, the U.N. in November sent about 600 foreign staff out of the country or into safer quarters inside Afghanistan. The decision followed a drawdown of U.N. operations in neighboring Pakistan. The U.N. said the workers were only being temporarily relocated, but the decision raised questions about whether the world body could operate effectively in the region with war raging on both sides of the border.

Eide, who previously served in senior U.N. positions in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that he would serve out his two-year term and only wanted to give U.N. headquarters time to find a replacement. “I don’t want there to be a vacuum,” he said.

Gareth Price, head of the Asia program at Chatham House, a think tank in London, said Eide’s position was weak from the start.

“Before he got the position, there was a suggestion there should be someone stronger who could knock heads together in Afghanistan,” Price said.

Paddy Ashdown, a British diplomat who was Bosnia-Herzegovina’s postwar international administrator, had the backing of the U.S. and British officials for the job, but that the Afghan government “wanted someone softer,” Price said.

“Eide was the man who filled that role, but it’s clear now that the Afghan government isn’t working, and the message from America is that they do want someone stronger again.”

There was no immediate comment from Afghan or U.S. officials.

His successor will face a tough job improving coordination of development efforts in Afghanistan, amid surging Taliban violence and doubts both in the West and among Afghans over whether the insurgents can be defeated.

In northern Afghanistan on Friday, German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg visited Kunduz province where a Sept. 4 airstrike believed to have killed many civilians caused deep anger in Afghanistan and political turbulence in Berlin. German officials have said they plan to negotiate compensation for relatives of the victims.

German officials, citing a classified NATO report, have said up to 142 people were killed or wounded in the airstrike on two tanker trucks captured by the Taliban. Local Afghan leaders estimated the number of civilian deaths at between 30 and 40.

Guttenberg, who called the airstrike “militarily inappropriate,” removed the military’s chief of staff last month, and the defense minister at the time, Franz Josef Jung, has since resigned from his new job as labor minister.

Germany has more than 4,000 troops serving in northern Afghanistan, making it one of the principal contributors to the multinational NATO force in the country.

In the latest violence, two police officers and three civilians were killed Friday when a motorcyclist blew himself up in eastern Afghanistan. Five other officers and 16 civilians were wounded in the midday blast in a crowded area of Paktika province’s capital, Sharan, police chief of Gen. Dawlat Khan said.

Also, a blast killed a child and wounded at least a dozen other civilians at a wedding near the eastern city of Jalalabad Thursday night. Police said a family dispute was likely behind the attack.