Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday blamed foreigners,including UN and EU officials,for "very widespread" fraud during presidential and provincial elections last year. Since being sworn in for a second term in November,Karzai has come under huge Western pressure to tackle corruption,combat drugs,crime and the influence of notorious warlords in the Western-backed Afghan government. "There was fraud in presidential and provincial council elections - no doubt that there was a very widespread fraud,very widespread," Karzai told a meeting with Afghan election commission workers in Kabul. "But Afghans did not do this fraud. The foreigners did this fraud," he told staff whom he thanked for their work in organising elections "under extreme conditions". He singled out former UN deputy head of mission,Peter Galbraith,who was sacked after a row with his boss on how to handle vote irregularities,and the head of the EU election observation mission to Afghanistan,Philippe Morillon. Galbraith had previously said that as many as 30 per cent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent while the EU observation mission branded 1.5 million votes cast in the election "suspicious" and refused to be party to any "massive fraud". "The United Nations,the United Nations office of the deputy (UN representative) had become the focal point for fraud," Karzai said. "The fraud was being made from there" and "organised from there",he charged,then "fed" to international media to "publish and accuse us of fraud". Karzai was heavily criticised in the West after amending a law in February to give himself full control of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC),stripping the United Nations of authority to pick three of its five members. The ECC,which also had two Afghan members,played a major role in rooting out fraud in the August 20 presidential poll and declared half a million votes cast for Karzai invalid. Last month,after pressure from Western backers,Karzai's chief spokesman said the president had agreed to let two non-Afghans join the watchdog ahead of parliamentary elections due September. Despite the massive fraud,Karzai was declared re-elected for a second five-year mandate after his only rival pulled out of a scheduled run-off and he was sworn back into office on November 19,vowing to crack down on corruption. The UN mission in Kabul was also heavily criticised in Afghanistan and abroad for the way it dealt with the emergence of major electoral fraud.
