Rival's exit hands Karzai victory

Reported by teletext on Monday, 2 November 2009 (on November 2, 2009)

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has effectively been handed a second five-year term.It came after his only challenger dropped out of the race, and after the US said it was prepared to work with the man it had previously criticised.Barack Obama has been waiting for a new government in Kabul to announce whether he would send tens of thousands of new troops to Afghanistan.The war has intensified and October was the deadliest month of the eight-year war for US forces.Former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah announced his decision to quit on Sunday, six days before the run-off election, after last-minute talks led by the US and United Nations failed to produce a power-sharing agreement acceptable to Mr Karzai, according to a Western diplomat.In an emotional speech, Mr Abdullah told supporters that he could not accept a run-off led by the same Karzai-appointed election commission that managed the fraud-marred vote in August.The run-off was set for November 7 after United Nations-backed auditors annulled nearly a third of Mr Karzai's votes as fakes."I will not participate in the November 7 election," Mr Abdullah said, because a "transparent election is not possible".The Obama administration, which had been critical of Mr Karzai's leadership, appeared to accept the outcome. Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said most polls showed Mr Abdullah would have lost the run-off anyway "so we are going to deal with the government that is there".Mr Axelrod said Mr Obama would announce a war strategy "within weeks". A senior US official said Mr Obama had still not yet decided what to do and it remained unclear whether he would decide before he went to Asia on November 11.

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