KABUL, Afghanistan | Taliban militants threatened Afghans with violence Saturday if they vote in the Nov. 7 runoff presidential election, as President Hamid Karzai’s campaign ruled out any power-sharing deal to avoid another ballot.
Supporters of Mr. Karzai’s challenger, meanwhile, urged the country’s top three election officials to step down - claiming they were involved in rigging the first round of fraud-marred voting in August and should not be responsible for organizing the upcoming vote.
President Obama’s administration is hoping the runoff will produce a legitimate government after massive ballot-rigging sullied the first-round vote Aug. 20.
The Taliban issued its warning on the first official day of campaigning for the runoff, denouncing the contest between Mr. Karzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah as “a failed, American process.”
They said fighters would “launch operations against the enemy and stop people from taking part” in the election, warning that anyone who casts a ballot “will bear responsibility for their actions.”
Taliban fighters killed dozens of people during the August balloting, firing rockets at several provincial cities and cutting off people’s ink-stained fingers that indicated they had voted.
The runoff was called last Tuesday after Mr. Karzai bowed to intense U.S. and international pressure and accepted the findings of a U.N.-backed panel that determined he fell short of the 50 percent threshold needed for an outright victory in the 36-candidate field.
Taliban threats kept thousands of people at home in August, helping push turnout below 40 percent. Officials fear even lower turnout this time, raising questions about the new president’s mandate no matter who wins.
Some Obama administration officials had hoped Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah could cut a power-sharing deal to avoid a costly and risky runoff, although such talk has faded in recent days.
In an interview to be aired Sunday on CNN, Mr. Abdullah said he had left the Karzai administration three years ago “and since then I’ve not been tempted to be part of that government.”
Senior Abdullah campaign officials on Saturday accused the top three members of Afghan Independent Election Commission of bias and complicity in fraud, saying they should be replaced to ensure the upcoming runoff is fair. They singled out election commission Chairman Azizullah Lodin, chief electoral officer Daoud Ali Najafi and the commission’s deputy director, Zekria Barakzai.
Noor Mohammad Noor, an election commission spokesman, said the officials had been appointed by constitutional procedures and cannot be replaced.
Also Saturday, NATO announced that two Americans and one service member whose nationality was withheld were killed in separate bombings in the south. That brought to 32 the number of U.S. troops killed this month, according to an Associated Press count.
Meanwhile, U.S. and Afghan officials said American troops killed four civilians when they fired on a van approaching their convoy on the main highway in southern Kandahar province. The dead included two women and one child, Kandahar’s governor said in a statement. Four others were wounded.
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