U.S. Critic of Karzai Is Fired From U.N. Mission

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/world/asia/01nations.html
October 1, 2009
U.S. Critic of Karzai Is Fired From U.N. Mission
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — Peter W. Galbraith, the deputy United Nations special
representative for Afghanistan and the highest American official there for
the world body, was removed from his post Wednesday after an open clash
with the head of the United Nations mission.

The United Nations announced the decision just a day after Ban Ki-moon,
the secretary general, expressed confidence in Mr. Galbraith during a news
conference. Mr. Ban decided to recall Mr. Galbraith because of
irreconcilable differences with Kai Eide, his Norwegian boss, burst into
the open, said senior U.N. officials and diplomats.

“The secretary general has made this decision in the best interest of the
mission,” said a terse statement attributed to Mr. Ban’s spokeswoman. “He
reaffirms his full support for his special representative, Kai Eide.”

Michele Montas, the spokewoman, said she could not elaborate on the
statement, other than to say that Mr. Galbraith would return briefly to
Kabul to wind down his affairs.

The two men have clashed repeatedly, United Nations officials said, and
their different approaches came to a head over the vote recount after the
Aug. 20 Afghan presidential election. Mr. Galbraith demanded a total
recount, but then left Afghanistan and retreated to his Vermont farm.
Until now, Mr. Ban and others had been saying that Mr. Galbraith was
expected to return to Kabul.

With American officials increasingly accepting the idea that Mr. Karzai
will be the next president, Mr. Galbraith’s stance put him at odds with
both the Obama administration and the United Nations.

One senior United Nations official said that the split between Mr.
Galbraith and Mr. Eide came because of a personality clash, not
differences over policy with the Obama administration.

Mr. Galbraith took exception to that characterization, noting that he had
known Mr. Eide for years and had even been introduced to his wife by Mr.
Eide.

Rather, Mr. Galbraith said, the issue was that the United Nations mission
had gathered extensive evidence of fraud in the Afghan presidential vote,
particularly from ghost polling stations, which Mr. Eide chose not to
share with Afghan election institutions.

Mr. Galbraith, who had previously served as American ambassador to Croatia
and served in Iraq, said the polling places in areas controlled by the
Taliban were the ones where much of the fraud had taken place. It was
obvious before the election that they would not be able to open and had
enormous potential for fraud, he said.

Mr. Galbraith said some ministers close to Mr. Karzai had opposed the idea
of officially shutting those stations, but that he had a good working
relationship with some other ministers and having worked in numerous
wartorn countries, was sensitive to the difficulties such governments
faced.

“I simply decided I could not be complicit in the cover up of fraud,” he
said, speaking by telephone from Vermont.

Mr. Eide was believed returning to Kabul from Afghanistan and could not be
reached for comment. Senior aides to Mr. Ban did not return telephone
calls or e-mail messages seeking comment. Reaction to Mr. Galbraith’s
removal was swift from the campaign of Abdullah Abdullah, the former
Afghan foreign minister who finished second to Mr. Karzai in the Aug. 20
election and who would face him again if the recount and fraud review lead
to a runoff. “By firing someone like Peter Galbraith from his post, it is
the first sign that fraud is victorious over the law,” said Salih Mohammad
Registani, the deputy campaign manager for Mr. Abdullah.

Mr. Galbraith has long been an aide and adviser to Richard C. Holbrooke,
President Obama’s special representative to the region, and his
appointment last March was seen as a way of improving coordination between
American efforts and those of the United Nations across a broad array of
fields.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the United Nations to chair
a Security Council session on the subject of women in armed conflict,
declined to comment on the matter. “That is a United Nations matter,” she
said.

One United Nations official said that Mr. Eide believed that the United
Nations should take a soft approach toward the Afghan government while Mr.
Galbraith was more confrontational. “The Afghans were saying, ‘We simply
don’t want to deal with the guy,’ ” said one United Nations official, who
added that the Afghans said they felt they were being addressed like a
junta in a banana republic. The officials spoke anonymously because they
were not authorized to comment publicly.

Mr. Eide, a Norwegian, preferred to let other bodies, like Afghanistan’s
Independent Election Commission and the United Nations-backed Electoral
Complaints Commission, address questions about election fraud. Ultimately,
the United Nations decided that Mr. Eide was right, but Mr. Ban decided
that the internal dispute became too public, diplomats and officials said.

“There has to be a single leadership on the main issues of policy,” said
John Sawers, the United Nations ambassador from Britain, which has some
9,100 troops in Afghanistan, second only to the United States. “I think it
is mainly a question of whether it was the U.N.’s role to determine the
validity or otherwise of the election and the results of that election. In
fact, Mr. Eide was correct in saying that those responsibilities lie with
other bodies.”

Mr. Eide was at the United Nations on Tuesday to brief the Security
Council about the situation in Afghanistan but refused to comment on his
relationship with Mr. Galbraith, although he has acknowledged differences
previously.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

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