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Gates: US 'tried to oust Hamid Karzai by manipulating Afghan elections'
Source: The Guardian
US 'tried to oust Hamid Karzai by manipulating Afghan elections'
Emma Graham-Harrison
theguardian.com, Friday 10 January 2014 13.06 GMT
The US government tried to oust the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, by manipulating elections in 2009, in what amounted to a "clumsy and failed putsch", the former defence secretary Robert Gates has been quoted as writing in his memoirs.
Karzai has long claimed that the US tried to manipulate the poll to remove him from office, while Washington insisted it was an impartial supporter of democracy. The revelations in Gates's account of his years in power, which is published next week and covers the war in Afghanistan, appear to vindicate the Afghan leader's suspicions.
The top US diplomat Richard Holbrooke supported Karzai's rivals in the hope of pushing the poll to a second round that the incumbent would lose, Foreign Policy magazine reported.
"It was all ugly: our partner, the president of Afghanistan, was tainted, and our hands were dirty as well," Gates is quoted writing.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Emma Graham-Harrison
theguardian.com, Friday 10 January 2014 13.06 GMT
The US government tried to oust the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, by manipulating elections in 2009, in what amounted to a "clumsy and failed putsch", the former defence secretary Robert Gates has been quoted as writing in his memoirs.
Karzai has long claimed that the US tried to manipulate the poll to remove him from office, while Washington insisted it was an impartial supporter of democracy. The revelations in Gates's account of his years in power, which is published next week and covers the war in Afghanistan, appear to vindicate the Afghan leader's suspicions.
The top US diplomat Richard Holbrooke supported Karzai's rivals in the hope of pushing the poll to a second round that the incumbent would lose, Foreign Policy magazine reported.
"It was all ugly: our partner, the president of Afghanistan, was tainted, and our hands were dirty as well," Gates is quoted writing.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/10/us-hamid-karzai-afghan-elections-robert-gates
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