KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 22 May 2005 — A second senior former member of the ousted Taleban regime said yesterday he had enrolled as a candidate in Afghan legislative elections, while the country’s president urged more women to take part in the elections.
Mulla Mohammed Khaksar, the former Taleban deputy interior minister, said he would run as an independent candidate in the September elections. Khaksar secretly contacted the United States in 1999 to seek American help in stopping the Taleban, and renounced the religious movement after its collapse in 2001.
“I want to again serve my people,” he told reporters in the southern city of Kandahar. “I want to support the government and have good relations with the international community,” he said. “I want there to be no more violence in our country.”
When asked what he now thinks of the Taleban, he said the former regime had “positive and negative points.” He did not elaborate.
On Tuesday, a former Taleban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, who is considered a relative moderate, also nominated himself as a candidate in Kandahar.
The Afghan government has recently reached out to Taleban members to lay down their weapons and rejoin civil society. Several midlevel Taleban commanders have accepted the offer, but the insurgency continues to produce heavy clashes.
The September elections will elect both a new national legislature and new provincial assemblies. The nomination period for candidates expires tomorrow in all provinces except one, Nangahar, where it expires Thursday.
At least a quarter of all seats in the national legislature and the provincial assemblies have been reserved for women, who were banned from all public life under the Taleban’s rule. While 285 women have enrolled as candidates to compete for seats in the 249-seat national legislature, few have signed up for the provincial elections. President Hamid Karzai has urged more women to take part.
A US soldier was killed yesterday in an attack claimed by the Taleban. A bomb exploded near a US military patrol in the south, killing the soldier and wounding three others. The “severe attack” on the troops occurred as they were traveling in an armored vehicle in Zabul province’s Shinkay district, said US military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara. Two of the wounded were evacuated to a US-led coalition base near the town of Qalat for medical treatment, a military statement said. The third was taken to a base near Kandahar and is expected to be flown to Landstuhl in Germany for further treatment.
A purported Taleban spokesman, Mulla Latif Hakimi, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to The Associated Press.
