19 August 2004	Thursday	02 Rajab 1425

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KABUL, Aug 18: A group of candidates in Afghanistan's landmark presidential elections have threatened to boycott the vote unless President Hamid Karzai steps down before the poll, one candidate said on Wednesday.

"Karzai misuses government facilities for his electoral campaign - all presidential candidates have unanimously agreed to ask for his resignation," Abdul Satar Sirat, one of the candidates, told journalists in Kabul.

The group of candidates wanted Mr Karzai to resign "within one week", or they would call for a boycott of the Oct 9 elections, Mr Sirat said. He claimed to be speaking for all 17 presidential candidates but four candidates later said they would not support the call.

"I don't support the decision because this is an international norm that you can see in other countries - that a president can be a candidate," Homayoon Shah Asifi said. "If the president resigns there will be a vacuum of power," Mr Asifi said.

Female doctor Masooda Jalal and candidates Abdul Hadi Khalilzai and Ghulam Farooq Nijrabi also said they had not agreed to back calls for Mr Karzai's resignation. However, Mr Sirat's challenge represented the first public attempt by opposition candidates to present a united front to presidential favourite and incumbent Karzai.

Candidates Abdul Hafiz Mansoor and Abdul Hasib Aryan said that if the president did not step down and agree to reform Afghanistan's UN-backed Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), they would discuss boycotting the vote.

Mr Sirat accused Hamid Karzai of misusing his power to influence the United Nations-backed electoral commission and said a group of candidates had called for its members to resign.

"In the electoral commission there are his (Karzai's) selected people, but our party, the National Congress, has no representative in the commission," said another presidential candidate, Abdul Latif Pedram.

Wednesday's meeting follows days of closed-door negotiations among candidates to establish how alliances might be made and whether some would step down in favour of others.

But analysts said that it would be very difficult for Mr Karzai's rivals, who were using the presidential campaign to advance their own agendas to form a coalition which would hold together.

"This call for Karzai to resign during this campaign period has been voiced by some candidates individually, but at the moment it is hard to see that actually being acted upon, and therefore it looks more like a negotiating point," said Vikram Parekh, Afghan analyst for the International Crisis Group.

The meeting of candidates including Karzai's chief rival Yunus Qanooni, part of the powerful bloc of Tajik anti-Taliban commanders from the Panjshir valley, met to discuss pre-election strategies while the US-backed transitional leader addressed an independence day gathering at the National Stadium.

The grouping also included the vice-presidential running mate of northern Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Safiqa Habibi. Under Afghanistan's electoral law all government officials are required to step down from their positions 75 days before polls, with the exception of the president.

Discussions over whether Mr Karzai's rivals could pick a single candidate were ongoing, Mr Sirat said. "We have not approached that point. However, it is one of the topics that we are still discussing, if we identify it as good to our national interest we will go with that," he said.

Analysts said it was unlikely that the group could unite behind a single contender. "They have all individually been involved in negotiations with Karzai. A collective agenda is almost impossible because most of the candidates have individual objectives which are mutually exclusive," said Mr Parekh. -AFP