KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan and U.N. officials failed yesterday to agree on a date for national elections, further muddying the timetable for the oft-delayed vote designed to anchor Afghanistan’s recovery from decades of war.
A vote for president looks likely in late September or October, despite a string of attacks on election workers and voters that have been blamed on Taliban militants.
But Afghan officials say worries about logistics and intimidation by warlords could yet push the election of a 249-seat parliament — a far more difficult vote to organize — into next year.
President Hamid Karzai and members of the U.N.-sponsored electoral commission emerged from a meeting at the presidential palace in Kabul without a final deal.
“We can have the presidential election,” said Agriculture Minister Sayed Hussain Anwari. “But the commission says it needs six months for the parliamentary vote.”
Mr. Karzai is expected to defeat a half-dozen challengers for the top job, securing a five-year-term — and perhaps giving President Bush a foreign policy success before he faces the American electorate in November.
The election originally was set for June, but was postponed to September to allow more time to register voters and demobilize militias.
With more delay looming, Afghan officials now talk of holding the vote in the Afghan month of Mizan, which runs from Sept. 22 through Oct. 21 under a solar calendar.
Originally, voters also were to elect a new parliament concurrently as they choose a president. But officials say the two votes now may be separated.
Mr. Anwari said the government wanted both votes wrapped up before November — before the harsh winter sets in — crowning a 21/2-year drive to stabilize the country after a U.S. bombing campaign drove the Taliban from power at the end of 2001.
But the United Nations is concerned that if the parliamentary vote is held too soon, anti-Taliban warlords who allied with the United States will consolidate their grip on the country after the failed drive to disarm them.
Electoral officials also have no census data to calculate the distribution of seats in parliament, and there are no laws yet on campaign finance or media access for 2,000 expected candidates.
Said Mohammed Azam, spokesman for the electoral commission in which the United Nations holds half the seats, said the timetable should be settled “quite soon” — although it wasn’t clear whether more talks were scheduled to attempt to reach a final decision.
About 6 million Afghans have registered to vote, out of an estimated 10 million eligible.
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