KABUL, Afghanistan -- Abdullah Abdullah, the runner-up in Afghanistan's presidential election, is threatening to pull out of the inauguration today of the country's new leadership, which could imperil the national unity government he has agreed to join with the winning candidate, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.
Talks between the two leaders' representatives were going on late Sunday in an effort to save the inauguration to install Ahmadzai as the country's new president and appoint Abdullah as the power-sharing government's chief executive officer, as well as to celebrate a peaceful end to an election process that dragged on for six months.
The breakdown in cooperation between the two sides appeared to have been set off by what the Abdullah camp felt was Ahmadzai's violation of an agreement between them not to publicly reveal the vote totals in the election, saving embarrassment to Abdullah's side, which says he was the real winner but was cheated of victory by vote fraud.
On Friday, the country's Independent Election Commission presented Ahmadzai with a certificate confirming that he was the winner of the election, but once again did not publicly announce the vote totals.
On Saturday, however, that certificate was posted on Ahmadzai's Facebook page. It read that Ahmadzai "has received 3,935,567 votes (55.27%) out of the total 7,120,858 votes in the second round of the presidential election held on June 14, 2014. Henceforth he is elected the new president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan."
While the inauguration would most likely go ahead without Abdullah's participation, Western diplomats said, it would be a bad omen for the U.S.-brokered unity government and prospects for its success.
Another bad sign occurred Sunday morning, when Abdullah's representatives and those of Ahmadzai's running mate as first vice president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, got into a scuffle over office space in the Arg, as the presidential palace is known, said a Western diplomat who spoke to a witness to the episode.
Dostum is a warlord from northern Afghanistan whose heavily armed followers, wearing civilian clothes, have been much in evidence in Kabul lately.
Abdullah's team believed it had been assigned those offices in the Arg for the chief executive officer and his staff, and had moved in furnishings, when Dostum's representatives arrived Sunday.
"Incredibly enough, they came and cleared them out for Dostum," the diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivities involved.
In addition, Abdullah's camp was upset that plans for the inauguration did not give him a chance to speak and did not also include the inauguration of two of his officials, called deputy CEOs, who are meant to be the equivalent to the president's two vice presidents.
"They're going to have plenty to talk about tonight," the diplomat said. "This is pretty serious."
Fazel Rahman Orya, the senior spokesman for Abdullah, said, "As far as going to the inauguration ceremony, if it is not held according to the agreement and the plans we made previously, we will not participate in it."
He added, "If there is any deviation from what we've already agreed, then the inauguration is just so much bombast. Right now, negotiations are going on between us, the other team and the government over the inauguration ceremony."
Later Sunday night, another spokesman, Sardar Mohammad Rahimi, said the two camps were still negotiating.
"There are three disputed issues," he said. "First, handing over the first vice president's office to the CEO. Second, allowing the CEO to speak in the inauguration. And, last, swearing in the CEO as well as the deputy CEOs. No luck yet but the negotiations are ongoing."
A member of Abdullah's leadership committee, Fawzia Koofi, also said top officials were seriously considering pulling out of the ceremony, but no final decision had yet been made.
Taher Zuhair, a spokesman for Ahmadzai, sought to downplay the inauguration imbroglio, saying it would go ahead as planned with both leaders present.
"There are no disagreements between the two teams, so we disregard their claims that there are concerns and disagreements, because there is no disagreement," he said.
According to people in Abdullah's campaign, he has been under tremendous internal criticism from some of his own supporters over having agreed to join the national unity government, which he did after intense pressure from U.S. diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry, who warned it was the best possible deal he could get.
On Thursday, when Abdullah addressed his supporters for the first time since the election deal was worked out, he was met with tepid applause and, when he congratulated Ahmadzai as president, with silence.
"We all know he was the real winner, and we wanted him to fight for that," said one Abdullah campaign aide, who said he was among many who no longer wanted to actively support Abdullah. "Releasing the vote totals was the last straw." He spoke on the condition of anonymity to prevent future problems with his colleagues.
The plan had been for Ahmadzai to be inaugurated this morning, along with his two vice presidents, after which he would immediately sign a decree appointing Abdullah as chief executive officer.
The position does not exist in the Afghan constitution but was created by American mediators to bring Abdullah and his supporters into a national unity government and avert continuing strife over the election's outcome.
The terms of that national unity government were concluded almost two weeks ago, but at the last minute, members of Abdullah's team insisted that the vote results would have to be kept secret for them to agree to join it.
At one point, they proposed that the election commission declare the election a tie, which would then have given the presidency to Ahmadzai under an Afghan law saying that the older and more highly educated man is the winner in the event of a tie.
That solution was rejected, and instead, the two campaigns agreed to suppress the vote totals, and diplomats from the United Nations, which had overseen a huge audit of the vote results, pressured the election committee to announce the winner without announcing any totals.
It is not clear what would happen if Abdullah boycotted the inauguration, and if so, whether a national unity government would still be formed. Legally, Ahmadzai would be the president once he is inaugurated.
Information for this article was contributed by Jawad Sukhanyar and Ahmad Shakib of The New York Times.
A Section on 09/29/2014