Karzai confirms big cash from Iran

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Monday acknowledged that his office regularly received large sums of cash from Iranian officials but insisted there was nothing untoward about the payments.

And the confrontation between Karzai and the NATO coalition over the fate of private security companies accelerated Monday as the Afghan leader lashed out again about the damaging role the hired guns play in Afghanistan.

The New York Times, in an article in Monday’s editions, described the periodic transfer of bulging sacks of currency to a senior Karzai aide and strongly suggested that the money was meant to curry favor on behalf of the Tehran government in policy matters.

At a news conference in the capital, the Afghan leader acknowledged receiving semi-regular cash payments totaling around $2 million annually from Iran but said the sums were meant to defray governmental operating costs. Other countries, including the United States, make such donations as well, he told reporters.

“The government of Iran assists [the presidential] office,” Karzai said. “Nothing is hidden. ... Cash payments are done by various friendly countries to help the presidential office - to help expenses in various ways.”

In Washington, Philip Crowley, the chief State Department spokesman, said U.S. officials have turned over large amounts of cash to Afghan officials since the 2001invasion because of the primitive condition of the country’s financial system. The Obama administration is skeptical of Iran’s motives “given its history of playing a destabilizing role with its neighbors,” Crowley said.

Karzai said several nations have given money to his office - the first being the United Arab Emirates, which provided $1.5 million nine years ago when Afghanistan’s interim government was formed.

“That was a big help and we submitted all the money to the central bank and we were paying for the daily expenses of the government,” Karzai said. “After that, a number of other countries helped us in the same way.”

Karzai did not offer details about how the money was spent, saying only that it was used to “help the presidential office” and to “dispense assistance” to certain individuals.

“This is transparent. This is something that I’ve even discussed while I was at Camp David with President Bush,” he said, referring to meetings he had with former President George W. Bush at the U.S. presidential retreat outside Washington.

“It is not hidden,” he said. “We are grateful for the Iranians’ help in this regard. The United States is doing the same thing. They are providing cash to some of our offices.”

Hours before Karzai’s disclosure of the Iran payments, Iranian authorities in Kabul dismissed the reports with gusto.

“Such baseless rumors by certain Western media are raised to create anxiety in the public opinion and impair the expanding relations between the two friendly and neighboring countries,” the embassy said in the statement released early Monday, according to the pro-government Fars news agency.

PRIVATE SECURITY

At a Monday news conference, Karzai said private-security companies are enriched in the United States and “then they send the money to kill people here.”

The private-security industry is responsible for “insecurity in Afghan homes and causes the killing of Afghan children and causes explosions and terrorism in Afghanistan,” he said.

Karzai has come under intense pressure to back down from his intention to ban private guards from protecting development projects in Afghanistan, including a call from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, as U.S. officials have warned that the ban could shut down billions of dollars in programs and put thousands of Afghans out of work.

Behind the scenes, foreign diplomats have been working furiously to forge some facesaving compromise that allows Karzai to phase out the private security companies over time while not jeopardizing a key component of NATO’s counterinsurgency strategy.

In recent days, Karzai has remained committed to phasing out the private-security companies, while at the same time opening the door for possible compromise by suggesting projects that need private security could be approved on a case-by-case basis. Gen. David Petraeus, the top NATO commander here, Karzai and other senior officials were involved in an unusually tense meeting over the issue Sunday in Kabul, according to Western diplomats.

It was the latest in a series of comments Karzai has made criticizing what he considers the reckless role of private security guards.

Amid the uncertainty, some development firms have begun the process of shuttering some programs ahead of the Dec. 17 deadline Karzai has imposed. By Nov. 1, more companies are expected to take further steps toward a shutdown. In the meantime, Karzai has appointed Ashraf Ghani, a presidential candidate last year, to mediate a compromise, officials said.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” said one prominent Afghan of Karzai’s desire to quickly shut down the security companies. “I’m very much hopeful they will extend it or do something. It’s impossible.”

BATTLE OVER BALLOTS

Meanwhile, a losing parliamentary candidate and his supporters blocked a major transit route in eastern Afghanistan for a third straight day Monday, threatening to keep the road closed until election officials reinstate ballots for him that were thrown out for fraud.

The move by Pacha Khan Zadran of Paktia province is the latest indication that a decision by Afghan election officials to discard 1.3 million, or nearly a quarter, of all ballots from a Sept. 18 poll as illegitimate may cause as much upset in the country as if the ballots had been included. Zadran first shut down the road Saturday and officials said his supporters were still blocking it Monday.

A spokesman for the Paktia provincial government Zadran has blocked the main highway between Paktia and neighboring Khost province for most daylight hours over the past three days. Zadran’s supporters close down the route by walking into the middle of the street and shouting, preventing cars from passing. Though there have been breaks during which cars have gotten through, the spokesman said it is still creating major problem.

“I will not open the highway until the IEC gives back to me what is my right,” Zadran told The Associated Press in a phone interview Sunday.

Since preliminary results were announced last week, candidates across Afghanistan who lost because of disqualified votes have alleged wrongdoing. Many say they have filed complaints with a fraud investigation body arguing that many legitimate votes were discarded. Some have alleged that the election commission gave in to pressure to make sure certain candidates won by calling opponents’ votes fraudulent.

AID WORKERS ABDUCTED

Also Monday, gunmen seized a Dutch aid worker and his Afghan driver in northern Afghanistan, a local government official said.

Four gunmen took the two men out of their car in Takhar province and drove them west toward neighboring Kunduz province, said Takhar Governor Abdul Jabar Taqwa, quoting witnesses. The two were working with an aid group helping disabled people.

Police and intelligence officials are trying to track the group and the Kunduz authorities have been informed, Taqwa said.

Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Bart Rijs confirmed a Dutch man and his Afghan driver had been kidnapped, but gave few details and did not release the names of the men or the aid group.

In the south on Monday, insurgents attacked NATO and Afghan troops hunting for a senior Taliban leader in Helmand province. The gunbattle and a subsequent airstrike killed 15 insurgents, NATO said, although a local official initially reported a higher death toll.

Around a dozen gunmen on motorcycles fired on the international forces as they were preparing to destroy a bomb-making factory and weapons cache they found during a search of several compounds in the village of Maigan. Troops killed them and then called in the airstrike to destroy the compounds.

Information for this article was contributed by Laura King and Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times; by Joshua Partlow and Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post; and by Rahim Faiez, Heidi Vogt, Katharine Houreld, Mirwais Khan and Mike Corder of The Associated Press.